Congratulations to First Place Winner, Karin DeLaurentis...

They packed their bags, said goodbye to their family, and boarded a bus to Los Angeles.

They wanted an adventure. I imagine them making plans over dishes, canning or wash day. Just a half-humorous suggestion at first, then more serious with each conversation, they talk it over, growing more excited, more excited. Slowly realizing: we can do this. Over the protests of friends and family. Saving their meager salaries, counting each nickel 'til they had enough money.

In the land of movie stars and palm trees, Cora and Elsie lived a life they could only imagine back in Ohio. It was the free-wheeling 1920s, the era of flappers and bootleg. Instead of school marms, they found work as pert and well-dressed shopgirls at the May Co., a large department store. They picnicked at the beach in risque bathing costumes with their dapper-looking boyfriends. They tooled around on Sunday afternoons in a sleek coupe. In their frequent letters home, they described visits to Sunset Boulevard and the Hollywood Bowl, the La Brea Tarpits and Grauman's Chinese Theater. They spied stars and starlets (right on the streets!), and attended the 1925 premier of Ben Hur. In old photos, they look sweet -- Elsie taller and quietly pretty, Cora the beauty, very petite with coal black hair and a Clara Bow smile.

The ladies never married. They lived together in their sunny bungalow apartment until Elsie died in the 1970s. Cora was ill by then, and at last, came home. She lived with my grandma, her sister- in-law, for a short time, and I was lucky enough to know her a little before her death. She still dyed her hair coal black and beneath the wrinkles she still had her Clara Bow twinkle. I wonder if she and Elsie ever thought about all those clever gifts they sent us? I wonder if they understood, beyond our conventional thank you notes, how thrilling it was for a little country girl to get a shiny blue and gold box from the May Co. in Los Angeles, California?

I am guessing they did. I am guessing that young Cora and Elsie, as they dreamed of California in their farmhouse beds at night, might also have dreamed of owning a charm bracelet decorated with little red rubies and pearls.

—Karin DeLaurentis
First Place, 2018 Write a DearReader Contest

Congratulations to Second Place Winner, Susan Lee Miller...

One Summer's Day

I wake slowly, twisted in sticky sheets. My sister is mummified in her bed covers. The air dragged itself through our dormer window and just hangs there. It's going to be a hot one.

'Sue, it's time to get up.' 'Mom, why do I have to get up and Becky gets to sleep?' 'Because she is little and you are not.' I am 11 years old. Still, as I assemble my Frosted Flakes and milk, I am humming. The long summer is a rollercoaster, it takes forever to get up the big hill, but that downhill part flys by faster and faster until you slide into the platform. We are still on the incline.

The percolator is perking, the parakeets squawking, the mutt is chasing the cat, and two of my brothers are fighting. Again. My mother: 'Stop arguing or I will tell your father!' They stop. 'And don't forget you have to clean the garage today', guaranteeing another fight.

'Sue, can you give me the broom?' My warrior mother stands at the door, scrutinizing the front stoop through battle weary eyes. She planted evergreen bushes on either side, and now black, hairy spiders with bodies as big as quarters and legs six inches long live there. Every night they spin gummy webs that span the front steps. Every morning she weaponizes the broom and beats the webs back so we can safely descend the steps.

'Mom, can I go out?' 'First do your job.' I wipe down the bathroom sink, toilet and floors, interrupted twice by siblings who need the toilet. By 9:00 AM it's rank. We have one bathroom for (then) a family of eight, including three little boys.

'Mom, can I go out?' 'First take the baby for a walk so I can get some work done.' I lug the navy blue, oversized baby carriage down the front steps, concussing my baby sister buried under receiving blankets. Girls and their mothers emerge from neighbors' houses. 'Oooh, can I see the baby?' By the time I circle the block, two other girls with baby carriages have joined the parade.

My mother is sitting at the kitchen table reading the morning paper, drinking coffee and smoking. 'Mom, can I go out?' 'Where are you going?' 'The library.' 'Be back by lunch.'

I ride my blue bike several blocks, cut through the woods, cross over the Thruway overpass and keep pedaling. I go everyday. I get the next books in a series, and read paragraphs from books I randomly choose. Maybe I'll find a new writer.

I get home in time for lunch. 'Sue, can you help the kids make sandwiches?' We eat baloney or peanut butter and jelly on white bread, but cannot touch the sweet, thinly sliced Krakus ham; that's reserved for my father to have on rye with Hellman's mayonnaise.

I sneak up to my bedroom, plop on the bed and start reading The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet. I am sweating, but it is bliss. 'Sue, what are you doing?' 'Reading.' 'Just reading? OK, can you ...?'

My father is not home for dinner tonight, so we fool around until my mother kicks us out of the house. Someone suggests softball. I can't pitch, catch, hit or run, and am picked last for a team. Finally, it's my turn at bat. The pitcher lobs me a slow one that drifts through the dusk. I swing, and hear a clang as the bat smacks the ball and it flies down the street. 'Holy crap!', swears the pitcher. I barely see the bases, and grin the whole way around.

The mothers, backlit shadows in their front doors, call, 'Time to come home.' The steady rumble of the Thruway's trucks is getting louder, the truckers are making time.

—Susan Lee Miller

Second Place, 2018 Write a DearReader Contest

Congratulations to Third Place Winner, Jessie Heninger...

Not everyone knew about the cracks but everyone had them.

Dotty had her own, of course, cracks were what made you human. At times they could even make you beautiful. Like that Japanese pottery that was mended with gold to become something even more lovely than it had originally been.

But the cracks were dangerous, and hurt. Sometimes they continued to ache off and on like a bruise that never fully healed. If one of your cracks broke open it could hurt the people around you. This happened all the time, especially to people who didn't understand about cracks, to the people who didn't know to be careful. Once in a while a person would split so wide open and deep that the devil tar that lived inside would flow out destroying innocent people in it's wake. That had happened not long ago at a school; killing children and spreading hundreds of new cracks, like a spider web of fissures criss crossing the country.

Dotty knew all of this and she knew about her own. She had learned how to walk lightly over the areas of her soul that were most vulnerable.

Which is why she was caught so unaware by the breaking open of one of her very oldest cracks. In the end it wasn't something catastrophic that broke her open. Instead, it was something small, and vain which made it even worse when the chasm in her heart split wide and shattered her soul.

She hadn't heard the warning sound of the cracks spreading like thin ice at the end of winter. And was shocked as her spirit snagged and she toppled over the edge.

She hit the tar-like substance so hard that all the air rushed out of her lungs. She reached for the bottom of the pit with her feet but this crack was old and years of insecurities had carved it deep. Deep enough to drown in.

She struggled against the sticky tar, but it was hard to keep her head above it's oily surface.

She was treading the liquid now, trying to make her way to the edge where she could climb out. She knew from experience that there was a way out. Sometimes it was a small thing, like a sunny afternoon, or a crocus peaking up from the snow. Sometimes the only way out was the hand of a friend. She simply had to stay above the black surface long enough for them to hear her cry and find her.

Dotty was trying very hard to stay above the swampy, water. She was trying hard not to splash the poison on the people around her. She told herself not to give up, somehow she'd find a way out because she always had.

But, her arms were getting tired and her heart was too heavy and her friends had disappeared. What if some cosmic event had split open all the cracks, and her friends were waiting for her to pull them out and she was waiting for them? If she got out but they didn't make it, what then?

She didn't think a chasm like that could ever heal over. In fact it's sharp edges may just slice open her heart and she'd bleed to death.

Her arms were growing numb and her head was sinking lower into the slime. She prayed to her God that he would send her a way out; a humming bird, or the laughter of a child. Anything that could give her a way out of the hate and ugliness coursing through her own soul.

Just a little longer. She whispered to herself. You can wait a little longer.

—Jessie Heninger
Third Place, 2018 Write a DearReader Contest