KIMBERLY UNCINI
YEARS AS MENTEE: 1
GRADE: Junior
HIGH SCHOOL: University Heights High School
BORN: Bronx, NY
LIVES: Bronx, NY
MENTEE’S ANECDOTE: At just a glance, Lucy and I look so different, but if you’re our waiter, Tony, or any customer at the diner, you’d see the complete opposite. You’d see Lucy listening attentively as I break into one of my rants or me listening to her talk about a book she likes. Seeing Lucy scribble onto a napkin when we get the ball rolling on a story, Tuesdays at the Court Deli are never dull. Lucy never fails to inspire me and make me feel heard.
LUCY FRANK
YEARS AS MENTOR: 3
OCCUPATION: Writer
BORN: New York, NY
LIVES: New York, NY
PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: Eight novels for middle-school and young-adult readers
MENTOR’S ANECDOTE: Kimberly and I meet in a 1970s-era diner near the Bronx County Courthouse. I always wonder what our kindly waiter, Tony, and all the lawyers, cops, and neighborhood regulars think as they see us every week hunched over the table in our booth, talking, breaking into laughter, talking some more, Kimberly typing, me scribbling on a napkin. Do they see the light in our eyes when an idea hits, or the Aha! smile when the right word or sentence pops? And the pride in my eyes when I look at Kimberly? Do they know how much serious fun this is?
Destined to a sad factory life, he is tired of the quality of life he has. However, now it’s not just his life that he must think about. When punished for his crime he now faces a choice: to control himself or to be bold.
The room was a bright and pure white just like the hard chair below him. His confusion started to cause a panic deep in his core. Both of his eyes fell to his feet to find a torn white piece of printer paper reading: You have been banned from society.
He couldn’t believe that this was The Council’s decision … You have been banned from society. A life of solitude, without food or water or human contact in the days before his body caved in and died. You have been banned from society.
“How dare they do this!” In a fit of rage he grabbed this piece of paper and screamed. His hands gripped it hard and pulled.
Suddenly the void room was filled with a strong voice. “Calm down, terrorist.”
Terrorist. From an expendable worker to a dangerous terrorist in a span of twenty-four hours.
Unless it had been more …
“Calm down or we will calm you ourselves,” the voice warned.
“I refuse to speak to any of you, I stand by what—”
“You should know by now that we have ways of making you do what we want.”
Oh, he knew that all too well. Every single happy moment over the course of his life had been drowned out by fear. Fear of being too happy. Fear that in a blink of an eye that happiness would be gone. He made no apologies for what he had done. Had The Council let him finish they would have heard that he stands by what he did.
“However, this process is all in your hands. You decide your fate.”
“You bet I do,” he barked.
“Hundreds of people have suffered and yet you stand before The Council without an ounce of regret. Hundreds! So now, if you wish to be freed here is what you must complete.”
A whooshing sound so intense it could’ve blown him away, bounced off the four walls of the room. Suddenly the room was no longer white. The previously blank walls depicted his home and the love of his life. Mateo. He fell to his knees when he saw his prepubescent golden-brown-haired son.
“Tell us what happened,” The Council said.
“Go to hell,” he said with tears in his eyes and a lump in his throat.
“Fine, we talk and you fill in the blanks. You were tired of being an upstanding working citizen—”
“The Council has every male of age slaved away in those factories. Who are you to decide the life everyone has to live?!” His throat felt tight at the raise of his voice as he watched Mateo.
“So you decided to end a way of life that has existed for generations.”
The Council spoke, but his mind was on the footage in front of him. From the day it happened. The morning his plans were ruined.
“Where did you hide the bombs?”
In the film in front of him two national guards now walked up to the house, the way they did that morning. “At fifteen hundred hours is The Great Collection. Have your male of age packed and ready to go before then,” he said aloud, even though the footage had no sound.
“What?” the Council boomed.
“That’s what he said to me that morning. Mateo would have been gone before I even got home from the factory that day. I didn’t want my ‘male of age’ to endure what I have! Is that such a crime?!”
“Yes! It is. It is if hundreds of people pay the price for your male of age. But you can undo this. Undo all this pain, Joseph. All you have to do is hold the detonator in your hand—”
At his feet appeared the detonator. The same one he used to make his bombs go off, killing all the people in the factories. The him in the footage picked up the detonator, too.
“You can change this. Just don’t detonate the bombs, Joseph, and you will be welcomed back into society. You will be with Mateo.”
He rolled the trigger in his hand pondering the thought. To undo all of this and see Mateo again, Joseph took a deep breath. “I was going to do it on Thursday.”
“What?”
“I was going to do it on Thursday. When everyone was on break. But The Council moved up The Great Collection day. I couldn’t let you guys take him even if that meant killing all those people. The alternative was watching you guys kill my son slowly over the years and that I couldn’t do.” He caught a final glimpse of Mateo on the screen and his heart elated. “Which is why, given the choice, I’d do it a hundred times.”
He closed his eyes with Mateo imprinted in his mind and pressed the button.