Photoelectric

Excerpt

It was a night like any other night, which meant that my neighbor Jonah and I were together, and it was late, and the air conditioner was still busted, and there were so many flies soaking in the heat of our bodies and collecting by the windowsill, that we lost count after thirty-something. We kept my bedside window wide open even though there was no screen. The wet air stuck to our bones like another skin. The crickets, undeterred, chirped a little song.

Jonah looked at me, then at the sky through the square window.

“Ugly, aren’t they?” he said.

“What, the flies?” I asked, my eyes slipping shut against the heat.

“The stars, idiot.”

“What’s wrong with the stars?”

Jonah coughed out a laugh. “I know stars, and these,” he said, flipping a finger in a vague upward direction, “sure don’t count.”

I made a humming noise at the back of my throat. I peeked an eye open, took in the dull pinpricks of light and the backdrop of bloodshot clouds and then Jonah. His eyes were trained on the sky, his dark hair matted with sweat.

I bit my lip. My chest ached.

I shouldn’t care what they did. They could sell the piano if they wanted. It wasn’t like I used it anymore.

Elane Kim

Elane Kim is a Korean American writer attending Harvard College. She is the author of Postcards (Bull City Press, 2022). The editor-in-chief of Gaia Lit, she is a 2023 U.S. Presidential Scholar, a 2022 Davidson Fellow in Literature, and the winner of the 2021 Columbia Journal Winter Poetry Contest. Her writing can be found in Poetry, Narrative Magazine, One Teen Story, and more. She is very happy to meet you.

Patrick Ryan on “Photoelectric”

Our last issue of One Teen Story for the year—and the final winner of our 2024 Teen Writing Contest—is “Photoelectric” by Elane Kim. This quietly powerful story depicts an intimate friendship surrounded by volatility. It also depicts two teens on the cusp of realizing the world isn’t going to take care of them. At its heart lies the question: What do you do when your dear friend is in trouble, and you can’t help them?

Elane Kim loves language. I get the sense that when she writes she’s like an adventurous cook, trying out new ingredients, experimenting with flavors just to see what happens—but in her case, it’s words she experiments with. Sounds. She writes with an ear for the way words connect, and she sometimes contorts those connections like taffy.

It bears mentioning that Elane is the only writer to win our Teen Writing Contest twice. Here, she’s the winner of our 18-19 category; in 2021, she won in the 13-15 category. We don’t hurt for submissions to the contest, by any means, so this speaks volumes to her talent. Congrats (again!) to Elane Kim, and we hope you enjoy “Photoelectric.”