New York State Testing Program English Language Arts Grade 7

At Lockport the wall keeps a wet green tongue. I set my uncle's gloves where the capstan cooled, fingers pointed toward the lower gate, as if cloth could remember a hand.

A tour boat noses the chamber and stops. The tender does not wave at the cameras. He watches the water climb the painted numbers and will not speak until the levels agree.

I came to see the gates swing like doors. What I keep is the quiet arithmetic: up and up until two surfaces are one, and only then the horn, and only then the gloves.

To the Ithaca Parks Board: I am asking for a wooden rail on the east gorge trail between the footbridge and the second lookout, not for the trail to be closed. On five school mornings I counted hikers who stepped off the gravel where the edge has crumbled. Twenty-two people used that stretch. Nine of them put a foot past the gravel. I wrote the nine down while I was standing there. I did not invent the number after I decided what to request.

A board member said a rail would block the view that brings visitors. I agree the view is why people walk that far. A rail at hip height will cut a line across the gorge. That is a real loss. It is not the same as a fall. The nine steps past the gravel are the problem I am asking you to fix. A photograph can still be taken beside a rail. A photograph cannot put a person back on the path.

Please do not read this as a request to pave the trail, ban hiking, or rail every path in the gorge. The west trail already has a stone lip and did not appear in my count. I want one rail on one worn stretch, built before the spring thaw softens the edge again. The view can spare a line. The edge cannot spare another season of guessing where the gravel ends.

Lila set a kitchen timer on the counter of her uncle's stall in the Rochester Public Market and watched the rye dough in the gray tub. It had barely domed. Uncle Sol said it needed a second rise. Lila pressed a finger into the surface and called the dent a delay. "People buy what is on the board," she said. "They do not buy a clock."

Sol slid the tub away from the heater. Heat, he told her, would puff the loaf and then collapse the crumb before a customer ever saw the slice. He made her read yesterday's card: twelve loaves sold after the second rise, and four rushed loaves returned because the centers were wet. Those returns were not the mark of a slow morning. They were the mark of a fast one.

At eleven the dome held a fingerprint without sinking. Sol scored the tops and sent them to the oven. Lila crossed the early hour off the board and lettered the price beside the word ready. The first customer asked why the rye was late. Lila did not blame the market. She said the bread had been waiting on itself.

On the bus she switched the timer off and left it off. Selling through the loaves still mattered to her. The dent had been the dough telling the truth, and that truth was not a number of minutes she was free to choose.

Dev kept a ruler on the windowsill of his Buffalo classroom and told anyone who would listen that school should close when the snow reached two inches. By noon the ruler showed one inch, and the south-side streets looked only dusty. He called the day ordinary. The district note on the board used a different measure. It did not ask for a citywide depth. It asked where the band was sitting.

The weather radio, which the class could play at the end of science, placed a narrow band over the north side. A band, the note said, is a strip of heavy snow that can stand still while the next neighborhood gets flakes too fine to cover a shoe. Two inches on Dev's ruler would not have described that strip. One inch on the south side did not cancel it.

At dismissal the north-side buses were held. The south-side buses loaded on time. Dev rode past bare pavement and then, ten blocks later, past a plow buried to its headlights. He turned the ruler facedown in his backpack. Depth at one window was a fact about that glass. It was not a map of the city.

The next morning he asked the teacher to add a line under the note: say which side of town the band is on. Families, he said, still needed a clear number they could use. The windowsill ruler stayed in the backpack, a measurement that had told the truth about one pane and had been asked to speak for streets it could not see.

The flat of marigolds rode between Priya's feet on the bus, leaves already leaning toward the glass. She had pictured them ringing the footbridge on the Bronx River before the neighborhood festival. Mr. Dall met her on the bank, set the flat in the shade of the sign-in table, and put a tray of young sycamores in her arms. "The river does not need a frame," he said. "It needs shade."

He opened a July log. In the sunlit stretch below the bridge, the afternoon water had reached 78 degrees. Under the older trees upstream, the same hour read 71. The fish the class had studied needed the cooler number. Marigolds would photograph well and leave the sun on the water. The sycamores would take years to close a canopy. That wait was the work.

Priya had wanted festival pictures to prove the bank was cared for. A mesh tube on a thin trunk did not look like care to her. Mr. Dall tapped the tube and named its job: it kept mowers off the bark until the leaves could meet overhead. Care, on this bank, was a protection that would not fit inside one Saturday's picture.

She planted six sycamores in a crooked line and kept two marigolds for the pots by the sign-in table, where a color could greet people without pretending to cool the water. The festival could still look glad. The river's improvement was going to be a shadow that grew on a schedule no camera at the bridge could hurry.

Dear Library Board: Please add one staffed hour on Thursday, from six to seven, at the Binghamton branch near the middle school. I am not asking for Sunday service or for a new building. On four Thursdays I counted students who reached the door after the five-thirty closing. The counts were 11, 14, 9, and 16. Most were carrying homework that the branch's reference shelf is meant to support.

The director wrote that an extra hour costs a second person at the desk, because one clerk cannot watch the door and help with research at the same time. I accept that cost. A second wage is not a small thing, and I will not pretend the money is imaginary. I still think the hour is worth buying. Students who meet a locked door at five-thirty do not become less in need of the shelf because the wage is real.

Keep the request to Thursday. The other weeknights already stay open until seven, which is why I did not count them. If a full hour is too much this budget year, try the hour for six Thursdays and publish the counts again. A trial is a smaller promise than a permanent change. It is large enough to test whether the students I counted are a pattern or only a month.

The creek sign at the Rondout landing in Kingston is stacked in three bands, and the order is the point. The top band, set at eye level, says the path floods on a high tide and walkers should turn around at the yellow post. The middle band tells a history: sloops once unloaded bluestone on this creek. The bottom band is a map of the path as it runs today, with the yellow post drawn as a dot before the low bend.

Wes read all three because his class had asked how a sign is built, not only what it mentions. His cousin read the middle band aloud and told two friends the landing was a place to hunt for pieces of old boats. The history can be true and still not be the instruction. A sloop sentence does not cancel a flood.

Wes put his finger on the top band and then on the dot. "They put the warning where your eyes hit first," he said. "The story is for after you have agreed to turn around." His cousin said the bluestone line was the only interesting part. Wes answered that interesting was not the same job as first.

When the tide covered the low bend, two tourists raised their phones at the history band and walked past the yellow post. Wes called them back and pointed to the top line, then to the water already shining on the path. He did not call the history false. He said the sign was built so the warning would be met before the story.

At a Harlem rehearsal, Nia asked to sing the last page alone. The song ended on the word home, and she wanted that word, the breath before it, and the four bars of humming underneath. Mr. Ellison set the part on the piano and would not hand her the page. "The hum is the floor," he said. "The word stands on it. If you take both, the room loses the floor."

He had the section hold the hum while he played home once, above them. The pitch sounded like an arrival only when the other voices stayed. Alone, the same note sounded like a start that had forgotten its room. Nia heard the difference. She had been listening for a solo. The writing was listening for a place to set the word down.

She took the alto line inside the hum and gave the single word to Camille, who had practiced the entrance and not the whole ending. On the third try the word sat. Nia felt the harmony in her ribs and did not reach up for the melody.

On the walk to the subway she hummed the alto line and let it stop before the word. A solo could wait for a page that was actually written as one. This ending had been a place to land a word, and her voice had found its job in the floor.

Jonah had circled the far lean-to on the Saranac Lake map because a trail-app photo showed the sunset sitting in its open front. The photo was dated August. It was October now, and the guide, Ms. Pell, stopped the group at the near site when the white pines began to roar. "That picture is a finished evening," she said. "This wind is the one we have."

The far site faced the long fetch of open water. The near site sat behind a shoulder of rock. Jonah said turning aside would waste the walk. Pell showed him the posted note at the junction: lean-tos are first come, and a west wind over twenty miles an hour makes the far shore a poor kitchen. His photo had no wind in it. A picture can leave out the thing that decides the night.

They cooked behind the rock. Sparks went sideways and died in the pine needles. The sunset never arranged itself in the doorway. Jonah ate with the printed photo on his knee, wrote the day's date on the back, and under the date wrote, "Not a promise."

He wanted, some other night, a clear evening framed by a wide door. He folded the August picture into his pocket with the warning he had added, and he did not ask the wind to honor it.

On the community station in Schenectady, Hana's draft began, "We always reach every street on this side of the river." She liked the sentence because it sounded like a promise a listener could lean on. The producer, Mr. Voss, circled always and asked her to test the word against Tuesday.

Tuesday the transmitter had dropped for forty minutes. The east streets had heard static, and two callers had said they thought the show was over. Hana's draft did not mention them. Always folded the outage into a word that sounded like care and claimed a reach the log could not support.

She tried usually, and Voss shook his head. Usually was softer and still hid the forty minutes. The sentence she recorded was, "On nights when the transmitter holds, we reach the east streets, and Tuesday it did not hold." The new line was longer. It was also a promise a person could check against the log.

She pinned that sentence above the console and wrote always on a card of words she would not spend unless the log agreed. A welcoming sound in a listener's kitchen was still what she wanted. The night itself had to be allowed to include the forty minutes when that kitchen heard nothing.

On her first morning at a New Paltz orchard, Renata saw apples on the ground and told the grower, Ms. Okonkwo, that the night had been wasted. In Renata's kitchen a drop was an accident, fruit you rinsed or threw away. Ms. Okonkwo set a crate stamped SAUCE against Renata's boots and said, "Here a drop is a job."

The order sheet asked for bushels of fallen fruit, bruised and sweet, for a cider mill that did not want picture apples. Fruit still on the tree was for the Saturday market and had to be picked, not shaken. Mixing the two piles would make the market bin look tired and would cheat the mill of fruit it had already ordered.

Renata sorted until the crate's weight matched the sheet. A yellow jacket circled the split skins. She took the insect as proof the day was spoiling. Ms. Okonkwo called it a reason to move the crate into the shade, not a reason to call the fruit garbage.

At the truck Renata stopped saying wasted. The ground apples were ugly and useful. The tree apples were pretty and already spoken for. In that orchard, drop named a destination, not a mistake.

Elena wanted the train at the Poughkeepsie station because the timetable put her at her aunt's table by four. Her brother Chris wanted to bike the Walkway over the Hudson before the wind could shut it. They had one afternoon and two plans that did not share a clock.

At the bridge stair a sign gave the rule in one line: bicycles turn back when the wind holds at thirty miles an hour. The meter beside the sign read eighteen. Chris said eighteen was a yes. Elena said a yes at the stair was not a yes for the whole hour, and she did not want to miss the 2:40.

A clerk rewrote the 2:40 on the station board as delayed, with no new time. The next sure train was the 4:10, which would miss the table anyway. Elena looked at the meter again. Eighteen was still under thirty. The delay had removed the reason she had for protecting the 2:40.

She unlocked her bike. "We turn back if it hits thirty," she said. "Not if it only feels loud." Chris agreed to the posted number instead of to his hurry. They rode while the river stayed wide beneath them, using the room the meter had given them at the stair.

Jules called the Staten Island Ferry a hallway between boroughs and boarded with a science log that asked for the minutes when the boat held a steady speed. She was supposed to leave out the push off one dock and the slowdown into the other. She planned to write "about twenty" without looking up. The middle, she thought, was the part with nothing in it worth timing.

The mate let her stand at the window where the deck does not pitch as hard. He tapped the log. "Start when the wake goes straight. Stop when we begin to bleed speed for the slip." A straight white line behind the boat meant the engines had settled. A softening of that line, and a drop in the engine's note, meant the arrival had started to pull.

She counted eleven minutes of straight wake. Her guess of twenty had swallowed the shove away from St. George and the long approach she had not separated from the middle. The hallway had been three pieces. Only one of them was the steady run.

Cousins would still be waiting where the ramps knocked, and Jules still liked that knock. She drew a bracket around the eleven minutes and labeled it steady. The stretch she had called empty was the only stretch the log was built to measure.

The poster board on the museum table in Athens was large enough for the whole river house, and Caleb had already colored the beam pink to match the festival banners along the rail. He told the guide, Ms. Trent, that a pretty color would make more people look at the Hudson. She did not take his marker. She set the sketch beside the Coast Guard description taped to the wood.

The description gave the light's characteristic: a white flash at a set interval, the pattern mariners use to tell this aid from the next one upriver. Change the color, and a boat that knows the chart can doubt which light it is seeing. Pretty, on a banner, is a choice about a party. Pretty, on an aid, can become a lie about a name.

Caleb said the festival beam could be extra, laid on top of the white. Trent asked where a helmsman would stand to know which beam was the extra one. From the channel, two beams at one house would not arrive with labels. The chart would still promise white.

He redrew the beam in white, spaced the way the taped description spaced it, and left the pink in the banners. Festive belonged to the rail and the crowd. The light already had a name, and boats on the river were using it.

At a Syracuse market meeting, Imani argued for a cloth-bag loan shelf beside the entrance. Shoppers could take a bag, use it, and return it on the way out. She was not asking the market to ban plastic that day. A ban, she said, punishes a person who came on a bus with empty hands. A shelf meets that person before the purchase.

Mr. Hale, who runs the produce stall, said loaned bags walk off and do not come back. He had tried a box of them in June and found two of twelve the next week. Imani did not quarrel with the two. A missing bag is a cost. She asked whether the box had been behind his stall, where a shopper meets it only after choosing fruit, or at the door, where the choice happens on the way in. Hale admitted the box had been under the register.

She changed the proposal while the meeting was listening. The shelf would hold eight bags, each marked with the market's stamp, counted at open and at close. If fewer than five came back after a month, she would drop the shelf rather than demand a ban to cover the loss. The trial would be allowed to fail in public.

The meeting did not vote. Hale said he would watch the count if the shelf stayed out of his stall. Imani's claim was no longer that cloth is easy. It was that the market had tested the bags in the wrong place, and that a fair test had to be allowed to fail.

Before dawn on Lake Champlain, at a dock in Plattsburgh, Omar drilled one hole and held up the column of ice. Four inches. He told his sister Leila they could walk the bay. Their uncle, Farid, took the column and set it back in the hole. "That is this circle," he said. "The bay is not a circle."

He made Omar sketch the dock, the point, and the channel where the ferry runs in warmer months. Ice grows under different wind, current, and snow cover. A number at the dock is a number at the dock. Snow can insulate one cove and leave another thin. The ferry channel, even with the boat laid up for winter, was the last place to trust a measurement taken beside the pilings.

They drilled a second hole off the point. The column was barely two inches, gray and wet at the bottom. Leila had packed skates because four inches had sounded like a rink. She unlaced them on the dock. Omar labeled the sketch: dock, 4; point, 2; channel, not tested, not crossed.

Leila carried the skates to the car. Omar kept the sketch in his glove, the channel left blank on purpose. A day on the ice was still the day he wanted, on ice he had actually measured, not on a permission he had tried to stretch from one hole.

In a Flushing community garden, Theo pinched seeds from the largest tomato because the fruit filled his palm. He labeled the envelope BIG and told Ms. Chen the next year's plants would match it. She asked which vine the fruit had come from. Theo could not say. He had walked the row and chosen by size alone.

Chen led him to a smaller plant at the dry end of the bed, the one that had kept setting fruit after the August heat wilted its neighbors. Its tomatoes were not the ones on the garden poster. They were the ones still ripening when other vines had given up. "Big is a fruit," she said. "Stayed is a plant. We are saving a summer, not a picture of one tomato."

She had him write the bed, the week, and the words held through heat on a new envelope. The BIG envelope went into the scrap jar. Size had not been a lie about that one fruit. It had been the wrong trait to carry forward in a garden that loses water in August.

Theo weighed another heavy tomato in his palm and ate it instead of sealing it into paper. Next year's instruction was the vine at the dry end, named by a bed and a week. His hand could enjoy the weight without turning that weight into the plan.