By Greta Hardy-Mittell
Grade 9, Middlebury Union High School

    It's haunting me. Shimmering, shining, ever changing. I can't even tell if it's really there. No step is the same: a varying hue, a different substance, more or less transparent than the others. And if I look closely, I swear I can see images flitting through the fibers, dancing their way up and up, full of life. Some horrible, some beautiful, but each one strikingly familiar.
    The staircase looks like it's made of dreams.
    It pulls me like an intricately woven rope, ever closer, through my entranced state. I've left my doorway without even remembering it; I'm standing before this spiraling entryway to another world. I look up, and the ceiling has vanished. I see only stairs that seems to go on forever. I've never believed in heaven, but now… I'm not so sure.
    I have the utmost certainty that these stairs lead somewhere, that there is something out there, and I need to find out. All my normal caution gone, replaced with a burning desire, I mount the first step, vaguely aware that it will be the first step out of this life forever. But I don't care. For the first time in my life, I am exactly where I should be.
    The step feels almost absent under my bare feet, like I am floating on air, and it is the most wonderful feeling. Somehow it is like touching freedom itself. I climb higher and higher, my confidence growing. Soon I am running, leaping, knowing that I will never fall, I could never fall.
    A laugh escapes, and soon I am howling with glee. My heart is in my throat, my chest feels like it is filling up, expanding, exploding with the feeling of belonging. I have no idea where I am going, but it doesn't matter in the slightest. All that matters is right here, right now. For I now know what it is to feel the purest, brightest, fullest emotion.
    Joy.