January 2009

Icy Sparks

Gwyn Hyman Rubio

Icy Sparks is a young girl living in midwestern America with her grandparents in the 1950s/1960s. She doesn't get along well with her peers and suddenly starts having tics and croaks. Icy goes down into the root cellar to hide there urges from her grandparents and finally tells her friend, Miss Emily Tanner, a local store owner who is also an outcast from society at 300 pounds. Her teacher tries putting her in a solitary classroom but even that doesn't work and her grandparents have Icy admitted to a mental institution for observation. Even in the institution, Icy is an outcast. She sees herself as not as mentally ill as her peers there and is being tormented by one of the hospital workers. She befriends a second worker but really just wants to go home. She is allowed to go home after a while but stays mainly in the house or on the surrounding property, but not in public. After her return home, the atmosphere is tense even there and after her grandfather dies, Icy and her grandmother turn to religion for solace.