I step into the church adjoined to the school, carefully dipping my fingertips into the font at the doorway, imagining the nod of approval from Jesus. I bless myself. Careful to not scuff my feet, I edge closer through the bronze archway, aiming to go towards the back pews. They are empty. Head down. Head…
It made sense to do it – It was right, she knew it. Knew she loved him. He asked her, him, Who she had idolised, fantasised, His eyes on her, too. Nothing was too much, right? She loved him, That was right. Right now, that was all, All that mattered. He wanted her, him. That…
I woke up and nearly suffocated. The incisively grey sky has blinded me and I shrank in loud spasms of my body – echoes of a nightmare I cannot escape. I drown myself in a duvet to relieve the drumming shiver. Unable to have a single clear thought, I am fighting the rusting fracture sprawling…
Lights on – Lights off Tell me this, tell me that, Listen to my dad, not my mum’s female tones. But Alexa, she splits ears not Him. Never mind, you were designed to obey men first – shattering the earth with your new tools and ancient ways. Don’t listen when I want you to And…
bent before the altars in your city the ash sleeps silent in priest-like silhouettes. cinder shadows rest below the duvets, and somewhere someone hacks their gurgled lung, all a carcass from their stomach, it’s this plague. they say (you hear them say in every breath) they say (you watch them say in every…
Five hours. Five hours to get to the depositorium, five hours to sell, five hours to put the money in the bank. Five hours until rent was due. As the glow of street lamps welcomed the coming sun, she rushed down grimy streets, thinking about the memory she had chosen to sell. These days there…
Hiu Yu Wong, Year 12, The King’s School, Kent Throughout the course of science, many discoveries have been made that have greatly impacted our world today, may it be a fascinating invention or a complicated theory. Yet for one woman in 1951, she was about to change the frontiers of science without knowing. Henrietta Lacks…
Samuel Hughes, Year 12, Cardiff High School, Cardiff One of the most important scientific discoveries that still affects the world today was predicted by Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, realised by German physicist Heinrich Hertz and pioneered by Italian physicist Guglielmo Marconi. Since its discovery, it has made communication possible over vast distances, enabled billions…
Polly Painter, Year 12, Millfield School, Somerset The pill has ignited a revolution towards female empowerment. Invented by Gregory Goodwin Pincus and Carl Djerassi and approved in 1960, the invention of the pill was a monumental challenge but also an astounding breakthrough. In conjunction with introducing birth control into a country where thirty states had…
Isabella Kwiecinski, Year 13, Lady Margaret School, London Nobody looks forwards to getting them. They leave our arms painful and aching, they make babies wail and adults faint. The vaccine. For many of us that dreaded word will not conjure up feelings of joy or excitement, instead, the image of a sharp needle and feelings…
