Writer’s Digest 93rd Annual Competition Children’s/Young Adult Fiction First Place Winner: “Choosing Week”

Congratulations to Ruth Scharff-Hansen, first-place winner in the Children’s/Young Adult Fiction category of the 93rd Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition. Here’s her winning story, “Choosing Week.”

[See the complete winner’s list]

Choosing Week

by Ruth Scharff-Hansen

The black sheath dress that the Council picked out for me makes a crunching noise as I walk down the corridor to my first trial. It is too plain to give any hints as to what I might have to endure this Choosing Week.

I just graduated from what many would consider the best university in the world. A city full of dreaming spires, crumbling sandstone, and statues of problematic men who funded our ornate institution by trading drugs and weapons and people. It was austere. But the benefit of a serious education is that my path now seems clear enough. The professors I worked under are well-respected, and I am sure that the Council will take their recommendation whole-heartedly when making my Choice this week.

The elders say that Choosing Week is a relatively recent practice. Back when our country used to be prefaced with the word ‘United’, all young adults had the illusion of free will. But that illusion crumbled along with the economy. Suddenly, masses of fresh graduates all vying for the same jobs found themselves crushed under the weight of student debt, with no way to pay it off. Meanwhile, necessary positions that weren’t considered as desirable remained unfilled. The government, which evolved over time into the Council, decided that talent needed to be redistributed. They took this distribution into their own hands.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there is still some remnant of autonomy in the Choice. When you’re 5 years old, you share your future hopes with the Council, and this childhood nonsense is regarded as the first guiding point in their decision. And again when you finish school, whenever that may be, you work with your teachers to recommend a second option. This is generally the more realistic and thought-out possibility. Rarely, the Council will select a profession completely outside of these two paths: I know of a medical student who became a model! But most of the time, especially when you went to a university like mine, the Council avoids ruffling any feathers. They make sure artists get to make art, musicians get to make music, and bankers get to make money, and that’s that.

I’m going to be a lawyer. Adults have told me this since I was little. Apparently I have “a way with words” that should be put towards “something useful.” I’ve been groomed in this vision for years: from internships at law firms to heading up the debate club. It’s an easy slam-dunk for the Council. On the second day of Choosing Week, I will show them what a day in my life as a lawyer will look like. They will observe before coming to a decision this Friday.

Before I get to prove myself, though, I must make it through the first day. Today is a day to “live my childhood fantasies.” Like many of my peers, I do not remember what I told the Council a decade and a half ago. A distant dream picks at me—one full of tall stories and old books—but the feeling I get in my gut is dangerous, and so I suppress it. Now I dread to think what waits for me behind the heavy brass doors at the end of this hallway. It could be a herd of giraffes if I said I wanted to be a zookeeper. It could be mounds of unmolded clay if I had wanted to be a sculptor. Or perhaps I wanted to be a unicorn. What would that even look like?

I take a deep breath. Part of me wants to throw this day away, but I know the punishment for not taking the process seriously is imprisonment. And another part of me—a quiet part—wonders what I hoped for before I was taught the right way to hope.

The metal doors creak in their hinges as I walk through the threshold. The room is completely bare, save for a microphone and a selection of instruments in the middle of the padded floor. Immediately, I decide to leave the guitar and piano alone. I can’t play. Opposite me is a massive mirror: double-sided glass. They’re watching.

“Emily Hudgens.” A voice rings through the room, and my heart beats out of my chest. I assume a Council member is speaking to me from behind the mirror. Should I say hello back? Would that be inappropriate? It’s unnerving hearing such booming words when I can only see my own trembling reflection. I shift from foot to foot, fidgeting, as I wait for my instructions. “Rockstar.”

My stomach turns. Rockstar? I’m about as tone-deaf and talentless as they come! Why on Earth would I have wanted to be a rockstar? I briefly recall a late-night television show I fixated on when I was little, but still, this is a ridiculous task. I can do nothing but gape and force myself to remember that, as always, quiet obedience is my only realistic option.

“Sing.”

Shaking, I step towards the mic. But not for the first time, I’m angered that I need to go through this charade. There is a career out there for me that everyone knows I will excel at. Why should I bother with what might have once made me happy? Why pretend that we get to contribute to this choice, when even my goals were born from pressure? What should I sing, what should I sing? I lean down and echo the song I’ve performed in assembly every morning since kindergarten. The national anthem.

It comes out flat and harsh.

“Sing something original, Emily,” the voice behind the glass chastises. There’s a little laughter in it, and my face burns bright red at the embarrassment of my obvious failure.

“Original?” I repeat dumbly.

“Make your own song.”

I chew on my lip for a moment. I’ve never been very musically inclined, but you may remember that I allegedly have a way with words. The syllables catch in my throat, and when I choke them out, they’re tuneless, falling short of the chirpy melody I’m going for. But hey, at least they rhyme.

“I wonder what would happen
If I was just a teenage girl
If I let go of my worries
But held on to the world.”

I pause, hoping they’ll tell me it’s enough. But I’m only met with awkward silence, and so I scramble to craft another line. I’m getting agitated now, and perhaps a little too bold with my semantic selections. The words are starting to sound less and less like a rock song and more and more like slam poetry.

“If I let myself rant
About those who did me wrong
And didn’t feel an inch of guilt
About not singing this song.”

It’s a risky choice, but several voices chortle at the end of this verse.

“I wonder who I’d be
If I let myself slip
Into the world of adolescence
Where no one’s got a grip!”

They laugh out loud when I take a sardonic bow.

“Thank you,” I say.

Suddenly, I am very grateful that the single-sided glass prevents me from seeing the faces of my audience, for I can hear their pens scratching furiously against paper on the other side of this divide. I try not to wonder what it is they’re writing. When I write, when it’s quiet, and no one is watching, I only ever scribble so intensely when I am seized with inspiration. What did I do that would warrant that?

After an excruciatingly long pause, I clear my throat. “Um, am I excused?”

“Yes, Emily.” The voice says. “Be ready for your second trial this Wednesday.”

I want to tell him that I was born ready, but not only would it be blasphemous to speak to the Council that way, it isn’t true. I was made ready. I dip into a shallow curtsy—a peculiar thing to do, given that our country hasn’t had a monarchy in decades—and back out of the room in a hurried half-run.

When I get home, I tell my family how I bombed. They laugh and pat me on the back. My older brother, who made it through his childhood hurdle of marine biology before becoming an engineer last year, actually cries because he doubles over so hard.

“At least I didn’t kill a fish during my trial!” I quip back.

“It was an accident!” He protests.

I am assured that all will be okay, because I will be a lawyer anyway. I’m stuffed full of casserole and words of encouragement before I am sent to bed, feeling slightly annoyed. I’m not sure why: They mean well. It’s hours before the Council-mandated curfew, and a few of my friends are going out to celebrate the start of Choosing Week, but I don’t have it in me. I was defiant today. The Council may reward my boldness, but they may punish it too. 

When I take the same walk down the same corridor on Wednesday, wearing the same outfit in a gray color, I don’t have the same butterflies in my stomach. In fact, I don’t really feel much at all. I make my way through the motions: the room is set up like a mock trial, and I craft a watertight skeleton submission that I slip through the letterbox on the side of the room for the Council’s review. I then deliver a short speech, and though I am standing by the same microphone in the same room with the same audience, I am a different Emily Hudgens today.

No one laughs or applauds. I am dismissed, knowing I have done a cookie-cutter job.

The end of Choosing Week doesn’t conclude in a flourish like you might expect: Our country doesn’t have the resources. There’s no ceremony, no elaborate tradition, no rousing speech. There’s a thin, white envelope that comes in the mail on Friday, stamped with the official ink of the Council and addressed to one Emily Hudgens, 212 Primley Road. I know from my brother’s experience last year that I will be told to immediately report to my new position. After all, the whole point of this process is that the Council needs workers, as soon as possible.

The paper feels damp in my hands, like it has passed through many fingertips in order to get to my family home and deliver my fate. My brother leans over to open the letter himself—he says I am doing it too slowly—but my parents swat him away, though I can tell they are just as eager. They watch with baited breath as I read through the message.

It’s only four lines long.

It states my name.

It thanks me for my (forced) participation.

It states the address of my new workplace.

And it announces my position.

My parents don’t have time to ask questions, too stunned by what I have read aloud, before I hop in the car to drive to my new everyday spot. My hands shake on the wheel. As the glass doors of my office revolve, I think of the medical student who became a model. I wonder if she felt as alive as I do now.

“Hey!” One of my colleagues calls out as I make my way across the floor. “There’s the new girl who can rhyme!”

I tip my head at him with a broad grin. A way with words. The girl next to me chatters about how they heard all about my little show on Monday, and I can’t help but feel that the Council has rewarded me, after all. I remember how I hoped before I was taught the right way to hope.

There’s nothing on my desk but a fountain pen, a stack of empty pages that I itch to fill with dreams, and a name card that admits what I have been too scared to admit all along.

“Emily Hudgens,” the sign reads. “Writer.”

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