By Shelby Reynolds
Indie-rock pumped through the bass of her new “badass” Kia “mom van.”
Meera Duncan sang along with the words, feeling free of parents and like a true teenager.
Barely 16 with a fresh driver’s license in her black-striped Indian-style wallet, her life couldn’t get any better.
Nothing but Kansas prairie and long, open highway kept Meera Duncan, a Wichita Southeast High School junior, from reaching this year’s Flint Hills Publication Workshop. Duncan couldn’t travel with the rest of her school because of a church camp in Indiana where she sang with her band in front of 3,000 people. Instead, she went to camp alone.
5:50 p.m. Sunday evening
Southeast adviser Susan Gray, who was already at K-State, receives a text from Duncan reading, “I’m almost there.”
“We knew she was going to be late,” Gray said. “I was glad she was almost there because she would want to see the beginning (of the camp).”
6:05 p.m.
Duncan finally arrives, takes in the beautiful hilly campus and grabs some “amazing” vegan Chinese noodles from the Tryyaki Noodle Sushi Buffet.
But the campus seems empty. She pulls out her smart phone and texts a fellow Southeast jerd to meet up.
“Where are you?”
“In the hotel lobby.”
“I don’t see you.”
“What college are you at?”
6:45 p.m.
Gray receives one last message from Duncan: “Well, I went to the wrong college.”
6:50 p.m.
Duncan’s back in her suped-up van to leave behind the KU campus. Now to KSU.
“Mistakes happen,” she said.
Indie-rock pumped through the bass of her new “badass” Kia “mom van.”
Meera Duncan sang along with the words, feeling free of parents and like a true teenager.
Barely 16 with a fresh driver’s license in her black-striped Indian-style wallet, her life couldn’t get any better.
Nothing but Kansas prairie and long, open highway kept Meera Duncan, a Wichita Southeast High School junior, from reaching this year’s Flint Hills Publication Workshop. Duncan couldn’t travel with the rest of her school because of a church camp in Indiana where she sang with her band in front of 3,000 people. Instead, she went to camp alone.
5:50 p.m. Sunday evening
Southeast adviser Susan Gray, who was already at K-State, receives a text from Duncan reading, “I’m almost there.”
“We knew she was going to be late,” Gray said. “I was glad she was almost there because she would want to see the beginning (of the camp).”
6:05 p.m.
Duncan finally arrives, takes in the beautiful hilly campus and grabs some “amazing” vegan Chinese noodles from the Tryyaki Noodle Sushi Buffet.
But the campus seems empty. She pulls out her smart phone and texts a fellow Southeast jerd to meet up.
“Where are you?”
“In the hotel lobby.”
“I don’t see you.”
“What college are you at?”
6:45 p.m.
Gray receives one last message from Duncan: “Well, I went to the wrong college.”
6:50 p.m.
Duncan’s back in her suped-up van to leave behind the KU campus. Now to KSU.
“Mistakes happen,” she said.
Shelby Reynolds is a senior at Wichita Northwest High School and a student in the Advanced Writing class.
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