The One Earth Award, sponsored by the One Earth Fund and the Salamander Fund of the Triangle Community Foundation, recognizes four students whose creative works address the pressing issue of human-caused climate change. These students were challenged to create works that advance our thoughts about climate change and our understanding of solutions. Each of this year’s works not only meets the challenge, but also inspires readers and viewers to take action and have compassion for their fellow man. For their creativity, each student receives a $1,000 scholarship.
Want to apply for this scholarship next year? Learn how to get ready for the 2022 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards or sign up for a reminder on September 1, when the 2022 Scholastic Awards open for entry!
Congratulations to the 2021 One Earth Award winners!
Lauren Hilow, Aniela Holtrop, Joonsung Kim, and Ellen Pan
Things That Do Not Float
Ellen Pan, Science Fiction & Fantasy. Grade 10, McLean High School, McLean, VA. One Earth Award 2021
Plastic bags float. So do dead branches, and milk cartons long emptied of their original contents. The things that do not float: books, ceramic wares and my mother’s pearl necklace, which I accidentally let slip into the sea when I was playing with it on the dock. My whole life—and the lives of everyone else who lives in Ebo—revolves around the things that float and the things that do not. The town of Ebo floats, just like most other towns out there. It’s a large platform built out of foam and plastic scraps that sits atop the rippling skin of the sea, with little huts erected on top of it. We’ve heard stories of towns that are built on real land, but the idea of settling on something that does not float is daunting to us in a world where the ocean pleases itself. Instead, our treasure divers venture down into the swallowing blue gullet of the sea to salvage bits from the past world which they can use to rebuild what the water destroys. The number of treasure divers that returns is often less than the number that departs, but such is the price of needing to float to stay alive. They bring back trinkets to sell, things like clothes made of real cotton, canned beans, and silverware. The appearance of these little treasures are always the highlights of the day among baskets of dried fish and kelp. It makes life on an overcrowded raft a bit more bearable.
The people of Ebo say that danger most often breeds curiosity; perhaps that is why I was born loving the ocean. After many failed attempts of keeping me away from the waters, my mother decided to declare me a lost cause and let me do whatever I pleased. So each day I ran along the edge of the town—it took less than ten minutes to circle its entirety—to see what each of the fishermen were up to. I said hi to every treasure diver I saw and wished them the best of luck; sometimes I met them again, sometimes not. I often dreamt of going down myself, to momentarily become one of the things that do not float and explore the past world. On the days when Ebo passed over shallow areas, I leaned over the very edge until my nose was barely touching the water and peered down at the silhouettes of cities below, dreaming of the strange treasures they held and waiting for the day that signifies the end of my childhood and the brand-new opportunity to become a treasure diver. In the meantime, I followed my daily routines like everyone else in Ebo: squeeze past sunburnt shoulders in the market; listen to women bicker about prices and mimic their bickering (the fish are few and overpriced, are the fishermen working or still asleep in their beds?); take longing glances at new treasures dug up from the deep that I could not afford.
It was an ordinary day until I took my stroll around Ebo. By chance or by fate, there were a few abandoned weights left on the dock from the treasure divers’ earlier expedition. Most people were hidden away in their huts to avoid the sun at high noon, and the fishermen were lying a distance away, dozing off with their straw hats over their faces and their feet bathing in the water. Combined with my unyielding curiosity, the temptation of the opportunity at last broke the threshold. The sharp drop into the whirling abyss and the drum-like pressure in my stomach made it hard to hold on to the weights as I descended—ten feet, twenty feet, thirty—the rooftop of the house below me grew bigger and bigger until it was within reach. At last, I gently landed on my tiptoes on real land for the first time.
Underwater, my movements were slowed as if in a dream, but the asphalt street did not sway under my feet like Ebo did. It felt like trodding on the spine of a large, drowsy whale that had been sleeping for thousands of years. In the strips of sunlight, I could see rows upon rows of Victorian houses, all painted a green-blue hue from the swimming seawater. One had schools of fish darting through its open windows; another had tentacles of coral peeking out from under the roof. The window planter boxes that used to host pink-and-purple flowers were now brimming with long tails of seaweed, weaving in the water as if in slow motion on a windy day. Something big shifted in the far distance, then settled down in the sand again; a small red crab lazily made its way up the wall of a nearby house, stepping over clusters of barnacles that had made the place their home. For a moment, I could almost imagine the thousands of people that used to live in this town, their feet planted firmly on the ground, never worrying about having to stay afloat because there was no water to sink in.
All memories of the past now, a voice warned me. Stay for too long and you’ll stay forever, for down here are the things that do not float.
The inside of the open-windowed house was well-lit by dancing beams of sunlight that vanished and reappeared with the lapping water, each dissonance like the chords of a summer love song. I tread softly across the rotting floorboards, taking in things that I had never before seen in my life: a lamp that used electricity, a shelf full of books, and what used to be a mattress sitting on a bed frame—though it had long been colonized by barnacles and some sort of blue grass that I could not name. A closet with one door barely hanging on by one hinge, and the other nowhere to be seen; its contents either long rotted away or raided by earlier treasure divers. Framed photos were hung up in the hallway, most bleached a faded assortment of blues but still fully intact, all of them displaying the same cheery family that I did not know. There was a kitchen and living room downstairs, taken over by aquatic life and, in the far corner, a sleeping man whose long hair had become overrun by glowing sea anemones. He was curled up like a newborn child, his complexion soothed by a peaceful blue hue from either the water or his deep sleep. The man was young and lean with a body built for a swimmer, and his arms were tightly wrapped around the most luxurious thing I had ever seen: a silver chandelier engraved with angels and encrusted with jewels. I could not resist releasing my weight to pry the precious artifact from his clutch; he did not open his eyes. A small clownfish darted past my ear and into his hair, but he sat still nonetheless. Quietly, quietly, I backed away from the sleeping man, the branches of the chandelier sending up plumes of white sand as it was dragged across the floor.
It was then that I noticed the bitterness of seawater playing at the corners of my mouth. Remembering the treasure divers’ warnings, I swam out the kitchen window and willed the gulp of air in my lungs to bring me back up, still clenching tight to the chandelier. However, it soon came to my realization that trying to float with a weight this heavy was much harder than sinking with one. I flailed with all my might, ten little fingers desperately hanging onto my newfound treasure, but I had no choice but to let it go when a few remaining bubbles of oxygen escaped my lips and flew upwards, free from their captivity. Never lose the breath in your lungs, that was the lesson learnt from the treasure divers who went down and never returned. Now they, like the rest of the past world, have become things that do not float. Free of my beloved burden, I struggled towards the small square that was the underside of Ebo. Black spots in my vision danced with the patterns of sunlight that laced the border between things that float and things that do not, and all the while I desperately hoped that I would not become the latter. When I broke free of the ocean’s wrath, I breathed like a newborn baby who had just learnt to use its lungs, the sleeping man’s face vivid in my mind.
After that daring expedition, I spent a good amount of time on the dock mourning the loss of my silver chandelier. I made several more attempts at diving down, but as the treasure divers said, a man with a full breath could not sink without the help of weights. A few days later, word was spread that two explorers had become things that do not float while trying to rescue a fine silver chandelier from the ocean floor. The information rustled through Ebo like a lazy, hot wind, and soon people went back about their daily business. Sacrifices to the ocean are not rare deeds. But I rarely touched the waters again since that, which perplexed my mother but relieved her nonetheless, for I would have otherwise continued to pursue my treasure-diving career. Eventually the thought of the chandelier was washed away from my mind along with my childhood’s worth of loving for the ocean. As the people of Ebo often say, the entire world is divided into the things that float and the things that do not; when the tide comes, we take a deep breath and struggle to stay afloat as we watch our houses and cars and jewelry, now all things of the past world, be taken away by the sea. Life is up here in our floating town, a raft of plastic and foam that is filled with sweaty bodies, dried fish, and the constant bickering of market prices. As the water rises, so do we; people with a full breath in their lungs cannot stay forever with things that do not float.
Featured image: Still from Joonsung Kim’s award-winning video Selfish and Hotdog.