I started to step towards the door but caught myself. I should call Emily, I thought. My best friend, always the one to tell me when I should or shouldn’t do things. No. For some reason the faint glow and subtle smell of mold in my closet compelled me to shut the door to the outside world, leaving me alone with the unknown. I squinted to try to see the little door in the darkness. There wasn’t a handle, just the word PUSH carved into the wood where a handle should have been. I took a deep breath, and I pushed.

I tumbled into a warm summer day, onto deep green grass. I gasped, aghast at what I had found. I stood on top of a mountain, surrounded by the most incredible landscape I had ever seen. Everything was green and alive. As I took a breath, I felt the world breath with me. I laughed with utter joy and birds and insects answered my laugh with their caws and buzzes. I threw off my jacket and cast off my shoes as I began to run. I ran and ran and ran and ran until I thought my lungs would explode. My legs pulsed with the energy that had just been exerted through them. I fell beside a small stream in exhaustion, with overwhelming feelings of freedom. I’d never felt anything like this before. With no more homework, no more late shifts at the local grocery store, no more misogyny and discrimination, I realized I could now start over. I closed my eyes and began to cry, knowing that in the morning I would wake up, and that this world would just be added as another nightly dream to my dream journal.

—By Shayd W., 17, South Carolina