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Greatest of the Slam
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Great writing is about experimentation. To locate the correct topic, occasionally you need to research an assortment of topics; to locate the appropriate fashion, occasionally you need to test a range of various forms. That is one of the things which makes The Slam so particular --our authors' versatility. Our young authors are not afraid to venture out of their comfort zones to try new themes and styles. On Your Slam, there are no set topics or versions to follow: we promote experimentation, because we think that all writers will need to experiment to develop.

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The Slam is Cicada's online counterpart: a neighborhood where authors ages 14-23 may submit their writings, poems, and creative nonfiction and get comments from their peers. Selection is competitive--but using twenty six new pieces of writing moving live every month, there is lots of chance for writers of all abilities to donate. As you're submitting your work, you may even see what other teenagers are composing, article critiques, and browse the monthly Slam Master's Rant, which provides ideas and suggestions for young authors.



Once every calendar year, we pick a range of our finest Slam authors to attribute right here from the pages of Cicada. These are gifted young writers that are dedicated to improving their craft and to experimentation with various styles until they have found the perfect match.

JACKIE 0.

by Molly McGinnis
SAILING CROSS COUNTRY
by Emma Prichard

Leo could barely believe her luck when she watched the ship.

Her most recent ride had abandoned her while she had been at the rest stop toilet. Jerk. Leo slouched at a tacky red booth at the food court, glaring at the inexpensive cup of coffee in front of her, the very first couple of sips of that were settling sourly within her empty belly. Leo let her mind thunk down on the table. She was broke, she had been hungry, and as a result of the thick metal the jerk was blasting from the car speakers through the night, tired.

As there's power from the needing, she explained: The RV, not the household.

A yacht secured into the bed of a truck just large enough to maintain it. Painted black and white blue, the yacht had been half feet from bow to stern, and hereout of the water, it had been twenty feet from keel to the peak of the pilothouse.

For now she remained , looking bored while she completed her coffee. Not that it really mattered; nobody has been paying any attention . External, a tall, handsome guy hopped out of the vehicle cab, providing the pads and straps holding the yacht set up just a cursory test. Mentally, Leo toasted his lack of abuse; she'd rely on it afterwards. The guy came to the building, which makes a beeline for the bathrooms.

Casually, but fast, she walked to the boat. Lucky for her, an eight-wheeler had dragged into the place directly with the yacht, highlighting the regions where she might be viewed to just several feet on her left and right. She glanced up once again to make sure nobody was nearby prior to scaling, slothlikeup among those ropes securing the yacht into the truck bed.

A moment and a tiny rope burn afterwards, Leo slipped across the railing and fell on the deck. Maintaining low, she crawled into the hatch.

Inside, the decoration was equally as ostentatious as the exterior could indicate: lots of gold and silver mahogany. A table and sofas were fixed into the ground. A counter top and a little refrigerator made to get a kitchen. To her surprise, even at a storage compartment she discovered crackers, peanut butter, along with some other nonperishables. A feast!

For a little while today, Leo was climbing suspicious of her existing run of fortune. From the time she discovered that the massive bed at the stern, she no longer cared. Fast asleep in moments, she did not even believe that the lurch as the truck began down the street.

Watching the world go by through porthole was initially disorienting, afterward exhilarating, then limiting, as she had been always changing to find a better look at things. Was she tired? Yes. Certainly, yes. In reality, she did not even mind with no method of directing where they were moving. The truck had long since passed on Boston and had left a couple more pit stops, one long one through which the motorist had slept for a couple hours and Leo had snuck outside to stretch and get her claws. A brief while afterwards and they had been back on the street.

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"The morning after, Leo awakened and thought she had been at sea. Seeking the porthole, she watched waves moving by. She blinked and realized they had been passing with a lake, together with the street so low and near the shore the yacht appeared to be floating inside. Glancing out another windows supported her hopes; the street was empty at this morning. So she gave into a temptation which was nagging her because she stopped. From a storage cupboard she pulled on a folding deck chair, and slipped out. Careful to remain in the blind spot behind the pilothouse, she put up the seat, tied into a convenient brass ring, and sat down to see the sun come up on the street flowing away into the space.

She is halfway out the door , black braids flying behind her as she jumps down the measures. The hens scatter , squawking their indignation. She shuts the gate behind her attentively before she turns her back to the home and begins down the arid dirt street.

Late summer dust increases in clouds around her bare brown feet struck the floor. She tips her head back in the dust and also looks up in the clouds. I see her jump along, wondering exactly what contours she sees within their swollen whiteness. To live in a castle was my fantasy afterward, though my childish notion of what a castle appeared like was hardly what the majority of people would clarify. However, to my eight-year-old eyes, the home where I labored looked much like a castle than anything else that I could imagine.

The Morgan home has been three complete stories tall, with blank white walls, a dark green front door, and immaculate windows on each side. I cleaned those dividers almost daily. It was my favourite job, because from most windows that I could see Mrs. Morgan's flower gardens using their complete rosebushes and gently nodding daffodils. The gardens have been Mrs. Morgan's pride and pleasure, though I could not imagine that austere-looking woman with her flawless white palms working inside them. She used a gardener to maintain the gardens trimmed and trimmed and watered.

The only portion of the home I selected to the gardens was that the tower. So what purpose it served, I don't understand. The staircase leading to it, although constantly carefully I, were seldom utilized. Nothing was saved from the towerand nobody slept there or worked there. Regardless of this, I was occasionally sent up to clean the tower's lone window.



I loved my time in the tower . From it, I could look down on town and observe everything that occurred. I could see each truck which drove from among the outlying farms and see which stores the owners moved right into and what they purchased. I could observe the general shop keeper hired boy fall asleep on the stoop, and I can watch that the storekeeper emerge and shake him by the ear till he awakened. On top of that, I really could see the faculty and also the schoolyard, in which a dozen white boys and women played daily at noon. Their joyful bliss was the only noise loud enough to get to the high tower.

Pulling me with my ear, she'd threaten to tell the missus in my mind, although I begged and pleaded until she let me move. I feared she'd carry out her threat and I'd be sent off. If this were to occur, I knew that my dad would be mad, for my loved ones depended on my little earnings.

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The tolling of a remote bell breaks in my head and informs me I've breakfast dishes to wash. As I push my hands in my dishpan, the bell ends the strokes of the hour. The sound is familiar today, but each time I hear it recall the glorious day a year ago once the bell was initially put up.

Everybody in the city was there that afternoon. I leaned in my husband's shoulder and Maybelle held my hands as we saw three of the city men lift up the bell. A fourth person wrapped a rope on top of it many times over.