A vignette is a short, usually descriptive, literary sketch. The eighth grade English classes of Mr. Kenneth Cotrone have been writing vignettes and three are presented here with assorted student artwork for your enjoyment.

Written By Nick Perrone

Illustrated By Yuka Minatozaki, Samantha Noh & Amanda Piacquadio

I saw the leaves go down on the empty sidewalk as I looked out my window. The leaves were rumbling and fighting the wind like a hawk fighting an eagle. A rusty bicycle went across in the middle of the road and stopped. It made me think of life. How my life went. The bike just kept going then just stopped and lay there like a squashed tomato. After, I didn’t see the bike anymore. So many things could have happened to it. Could’ve gotten stolen, thrown in the trash, or hit by a car, just like our life could end out to be.

Just like the way my life came out to be like. Life can be stolen, thrown away, or hit by an unfaithful car. Just like my life ended up. My mother killed, my father working like crazy, my grandmother cooking and cleaning at her old age of 80 years old, and my brother who had gotten caught up in the Brooklyn gangs and the illegal drugs that disgrace our country today. We’re all illegal immigrants in this great country.

My childhood was the best. My mother would cradle me like a monkey cradles and cares for its baby. She held me and kissed me on my nose. I only remember one good time, when we were all playing outside. It was winter and the snow was down. My father was happy then. My mother beautiful and my brother not yet a felon. I was only one month old and not even old enough to walk or talk. Life was fun then. Now I’m in a wheelchair since the car accident that my mama got into that took her life and the one that paralyzed me. I watch the other girls have fun as I look out my window. I loved the fall. Everything changes, and hopefully this year my life will change too. Maybe I’ll be able to get out of my stupid house and get away from my messed up family and live my life.

I am fourteen. I believe I can do anything. My grandmother washes the table. The soap sprinkles around the table like frosting on a cake. I rolled my wheelchair on the wet floor to my room. I clicked my wheelchair into place and lay on my bed. Writing and writing and writing. I wrote to handle my stress. I never wrote about anything anyone would want to read. It just helped me manage my stress. My school wasn’t very good and I learned to read from my mother who was an aspiring author of miscellaneous children books. To think about her tore my heart limb from limb. I got back into my wheelchair and wheeled myself to the window. I watched as the cars went by. My father had a wonderful car. He had a mustang convertible. He rode it everyday with a scarf around his neck and big black sunglasses. He felt like a million bucks in that car. Then when mama died he didn’t feel like one million dollars ever again. He then put the car in hiding and now drives a Subaru to work everyday.

I looked out the window and saw the girls playing jump rope. I wish I could play. My wheelchair couldn’t even go over the rope. Pshh…probably wouldn’t even be able to get down the stairs. “Oh how I wish, oh how I wish you were here.” I remember that quote that daddy was singing from that Pink Floyd song, it was daddy’s favorite song before mama died. I hear him crying at night but don’t say anything. It must hurt him to look next to him and no one is there. He must feel like a sunken ship. All down and trying to send out “help” flares but no one seems to care. I care but I don’t know what to say to him. His life is hard. He wakes up at 4 in the morning and then goes to work and comes back at 11. I feel lost at sea and I wish I had some friends except for my stuffed animals that hang near the end of my gloomy bed.

I look out the window in my back yard from my window in my room. All I see is a soccer ball and a rake. I haven’t touched a soccer ball in ages. I used to be a master at soccer before the accident with mama. I played in the championships and lost. But life gives you lemons. To fix it just throw the lemons away and ask for some oranges. My old friend Kelsey told me that. It’s been my moral for life. I don’t have a friend anymore. Kelsey moved to Kentucky and I heard she got caught up in a whole poor epidemic and is now starving and other things. I have too many things to worry about; I don’t want something else to worry about. I write, I write and I write some more. My stress just disappeared.

I go to my window on the side of my house in the living room. I see my neighbors homestead. A girl used to live in the bottom of the house. She was nice but always used to talk about people behind their backs. She was also nice to me. But I never really knew what she was saying about me to her friends since she went to a different school, a good one at that. On the top floor lived an old man, He had lived through 3 wars he served in, he battled cancer and was still here today at 96 years of age. He had surgery on his knees because of a bad accident. He got hit by a mail women or something and got very hurt. Now he does the same thing I do, looks out his window looking at the leaves flash by and watching a rusty old bike getting tossed away like a life getting taken away from a man at gunpoint. Too much stress, too much stress. I write, I write and I write some more. The stress it’s gone.

I roll myself to the kitchen where another window appears. There stands a parking lot, where my grandfather and I used to play stickball. We would wake up at 8 everyday and play stickball until my mama called us in for dinner. Of course it doesn’t happen anymore since my grandfather died at a rusty old age of 97. He was a great person and had a classy heart. My grandfather used to be a driver for famous actors and lived a great life with my grandmother, his third wife.

I remember that in that parking lot, my father taught me to ride a bike and I started out on one of those plastic tricycles that he bought at a store for 20 dollars. My mama would watch me ride when my father was at work and would clap every time I would make a turn around the parking lot. She was a wonderful person. I miss her so much. Oh no it’s setting in again the stress. I don’t need this stress. I write, I write, and I write some more.

Life comes at you fast, just make sure you cherish it and no matter what bad things have happened to you always follow what you have learned and don’t do the half-baked thoughts you have going in your head. The cookies don’t taste good unless they are fully cooked and they are all cooked together. I write, I write and I write some more.

Written By Hannah Wilson

Illustrated By Rose McCelland & Sarah McGinnis

I watched a girl in Manhattan from my apartment window and on the train. I watched the girl and followed her every Tuesday and Thursday until the end of the summer. Every day in that summer was hot and humid, like the steam given off the iron. I watched the girl sweat along with everyone on the train, on these hot humid days. Her cheeks could represent apples based on the color, but not the bright red kind, the kind of dark red apples.

The mixed apple color showed her mixed feelings on the train, she was uncomfortable and overwhelmed. From being on the train in the city, I could tell when someone strange walked on the subway, she'd get nervous. It was the first time being in the city by herself.

I now watched a familiar girl on the train. She learned many things. One day, a crowded day, she was late and in a hurry for something. She tried to get through the crowd, but it was too big, bunched together like bundle of flowers. She couldn't get through and had to wait for the next train. I saw the impatience in her face, with her eyebrows as scrunched as a wrinkled raisin. Another time a group of boys were standing on the steps that she had to go up. They seemed threatening to her, but she looked, looked straight ahead and didn't blink, her heart racing fast, but then they were gone at the snap of a finger. That day, the girl I watched, learned to never looked scared on the subway because you might attract attention.

On the street, I watched the same girl, but now with a different personality than what I had seen. Shopping was big for the girl; here she looked confident, not afraid and uneasy. I watched her walk into the big department store with her friends laughing and looking at clothes too inappropriate for her age. Although normally she'd be alone and walked into a store on a side street. One day she bought a shiny gold belt that reflected from the sun. In a way it represented her new personality with the different gold shades on the belt.

Most of the time I watched a girl in which I could see emotion in her eyes, yearning to get home, but a sense of independence in the big city was just like her different emotions. Some places dangerous, some places that would attract people and make them more curious, other places big and overwhelming. Then there were places too small and crowded. The big city wasn't big enough to hold her emotions and personality, but I could tell she had a lot of fun and will share the exciting experiences with her own friends. Maybe she will come back next summer. I watched a girl in the city and learned new things about her every day.

Written By Melissa Layne

Illustrated By Jad Karim Edlebi & Emily Meneghin

You can see its glow from miles away. The City is an ever changing maze. Something is always different, something is always new. The bright lights of The City burn even in the day, like children competing for a mother's attention. Taxis standing still in streets scream at one another in the lost hope of moving once again. People are everywhere-tall, short, skinny, fat-all of them different races, different colors in a crayon box. Different places in the city are different countries. One minute it is 42nd street, the next it's Harlem.

Pollution presses down on your lungs, grasping them. Trees on the corners struggle to reach the sky, strangled in the shadow of buildings. These buildings scrape the sky, like pavement against the already scabby knees of a six year old. There is an escape from all of this, a safe haven. A fallout shelter called Central Park. To the offspring of suburbia, these trees seem artificial. No matter how deep into the park you flee, The City follows you the buildings will always rise above the trees, spying on you.

Sometimes it is like trying to escape a nightmare, but you are helpless while you sleep. Others it is a good dream, which always seems to end too early. As you walk through areas like Harlem, you feel ashamed as you try to escape entanglement of poverty, and you are overwhelmed by the pitiful scenes that surround you. You try to blend in, but it is clear that you don't fit. You are a new pair of shoes among many pairs of worn out sneakers, and for some reasons, reasons that you cannot explain, this brings you a feeling of shame. As you walk through 42nd street, your experience is reversed. You long to stand out. You try to act like you belong. You know you don't. This time you are the raggedy pair of sneakers amongst many pairs of shining new shoes. Once again, this brings you a feeling of shame, but this time you can explain why.

The City. The City is where it is always the best of times; it is a place where it always is the worst of times. It is the prettiest place, it is the ugliest place. For some it is a living hell, while to others it is heaven on earth. Me? I'm caught in between, while the two different worlds which both reside in the city are stuck in my head, like gum to your shoe. One leaves a foul aftertaste and the other leaves a sweet sensation that you never want to leave.

The City. The one that you know. The one that you refer to as "The City" and never by its true name. The best one. The one that leaves you wondering in silence. Where it is always the best of times; where it is always is the worst of times. But we, us who know it well, we know. We know that it is the only one. The only one.

Written By Nicholas Parisi

Illustrated By Kevin Lee & Sarina Magardino

Today would change my life. Something would happen. Something I couldn't control. But today, today, was a day of days.

I rose, on that gloomy October day, with the pale blue sky, dimly lit by the sun trying to escape the clouds that held it back. All I could see was blur. No glasses on. The soft wind sent chills down my warm back and raised goose bumps on my skin as I looked aimlessly around my room. I really didn't want to leave the security and comfort of my bed, my feet tingling and my toes curling at the thought of waking, but I had to. Today, The day, was about to begin.

When I saw him, I figured he was still sleeping, seeing it was early in the morning, but when I tried to wake him, all I received was malignancy. Annoyance turned to frustration, which quickly changed to horror and grief. I screamed, Mom, come, I think he's dead. She rushed into the room saying what happened? But as soon as I read the obvious look on her face like a book, I knew it was too late. My heart sank like the Titanic, and my eyes broke like the Hoover Dam, creating a stream down my face.

I had never cried like that before. It felt so new, like nothing I had felt before. This was the first time death had knocked on my door and really affected me. I didn't know what to do but cry, and my mom had stayed to help me, but there was nothing anyone could do. I had lost a part of me that I had once loved and enjoyed. Maybe that's why I couldn't stop, this was the first time I had lost someone I had truly loved.

I didn't want to go to school that day, but my mom said it would be best for me to get it off my mind. And ironically enough, my mind would not let free the pain my heart was feeling. I continuously thought of what had happened and when I reached home that day, all I saw was the dull gray of the bedroom ceiling. I didn't even want to live anymore. I stared out the window dazedly, and my eyes finally followed the rest of my body into a deep rest. One that I definitely needed, in fact, the only way I was able to stop thinking about my loss. All I saw at first, when I closed my eyes was black, which resembled this whole day, but then as I fell deeper into sleep, my dull pallet of black began to change. I saw brighter colors that fought back the heavy clouds of sorrow that had filled my mind and spirit. The winds of change were blowing and my sail had been caught in its path. And as I woke up, instead of despair and hopelessness, I felt relieved and somewhat content. What was happening? I couldn't handle this, I was just a child. But then again I could.

I soon realized I had matured, I had dealt with a curve ball life had thrown at me and I grew from the experience. I had climbed a small part of my mountain of life and even though I was sad now, I knew my broken heart wound mend, and I had many a ways to go before I reached my summit. But even on the day we buried him, the box that trapped his physical body, I knew his spirit and love still remained. I felt that the hole that had been painfully chiseled away had been somewhat refilled.

And I looked down and said a final good-bye to him, my eyes watering earth; I said fare well to my hamster.