[fiction] All the food is kept in the house kitchen. Yon and I, like all the kids but Symboline, aren’t allowed to go there. Symboline, the oldest of us all, brings out bread for children who’ve been nicest to her and flicks crumbs at the others. After she saw our first kiss the other week, […]
[fiction] Part I Elsie Wood, Stenographer, Age 19 Late The sun’s long gone when I pull on my woolen coat, set my hat on my head, dash outside for the trolley, late, and I can only hope I haven’t missed the car that will get me to Washington Street on time to get the next […]
She loved the theater despite its flaws: the faded carpets and cracked poster frames, its lack of a curtain call. She clutched broom and dustpan and strained to hear the happenings in the dark room. Sometimes people clapped at the end, and she could pretend winter had passed and spring had come and she was […]
As the credits roll on the theater screen, I check my phone. Eleven thirty-four p.m., still too many hours until morning. Dad left for work a few hours ago. He’s working nights at the hospital this week. I make a list in my mind of things I can do tonight to pass the time. Read. […]
A whirring, choking noise, like a spoon caught in a garbage disposal, erupts from my John Deere. I cut the engine, pull back. A half-chewed bone protrudes from a mound of Georgia red clay. At least it’s not a pile of dried dog shit. When that stuff gets up in the blades it spews out […]
Danny was always looking hard at everything, but at the moment he was looking especially hard at Carly the Carp, who had the knife in hand and at-the-ready for oblivious violence. That’s all it took to kick the music off in his head. Bongos carried the wobbly melody along, thudding and thumping deep in his […]
When I say the tree was hollow, I do not mean the trunk of it. No, the trunk was sturdy and new. Instead, the branches grew in all directions, even along the ground, spreading feverishly, so that there was a space inside where you could sit and talk, feet dangling off the ground, like being […]
In the shower, I let the hot water rinse out the blood, the tremors in my fingers quieting. I have a nice stack of scars and I wonder if they’ll still be there when I’m old, if I make it to old, and what I’ll tell my children or grandchildren when they ask me what they are. Maybe I’ll tell them that I was a knife juggler. They’ll like that. …
July is obscenely hot, but the air conditioning broke two weeks ago and their mother won’t let them leave the house, so they suffer quietly. Felix sits on the plastic-covered couch, poking at the remote control with his toes, flipping from Maury to PBS to the station that only ever plays novellas. There is thin […]
You started it. Last Thursday. Under the stairway next to the cafeteria door, there was a spot where the cameras don’t reach. The security guard was probably staring at a freshmen girl’s butt. You must have slipped right past him. I noticed it on my way to the bathroom. When I walked by, the security […]
“It’s so…” I sighed and stared at the dress. “Colorful?” Phoebe guessed. I shook my head. “Stylish?” “No.” “Then I think I know what you mean.” Dreamy, I thought. Charming, lovely, exquisite, ornate. It looks like something out of the fairytales my mother told me when I was little, before the laws took our stories […]
JD twists in his chair and searches for something to toss in the fire. This shouldn’t be difficult. Woods border the site, and sticks litter the ground in the trees’ shade. A good-sized limb rests between my family’s tent and the trail that leads to the playground. But JD needs something in arm’s reach. He […]
I’ve never been afraid of ghosts. Never thought a shadowy figure appearing at the end of my bed would be all that frightening. So when the dead girl appears in my grandmother’s kitchen on a humid August morning, my eyebrows nearly hike off my forehead with excitement. My first thought is that I’m not alone […]
Dad was with me when I saw a whale go by on the back of a truck. It was black, and three people stood around it, scooping seawater from somewhere in the truck bed and throwing it onto the whale by the bucketful. “A whale just drove by,” I said to Dad. We were sitting […]
That was one of my favorite parts of it all—of Allie and me being friends, I mean—sitting there in her passenger seat, with the streetlamp on my neighbor’s lawn glowing in on us through the dashboard, the night’s playlist soft in the background. I liked when I could just barely see her, except for her […]
The Catalina Express docked alongside the pier. The ride from Long Beach had been choppy as the boat bounced over swells; passengers stumbled on deck and spilled drinks while waves hammered the bow. I’ve traveled the Channel every year since I can remember, but this was the first time going to the island without my […]
DJ races under the schoolyard hoop to snatch my ball and fling it over the rusted chain link into the street. The ball skids in the gutter in front of the bus riders who hoot and point and I get embarrassed and mad all at the same time. “Boy you’re nothin’ playin’ in this school […]
At first, we kept it underneath the porch. Jack wanted me to hide it in my room, but my mom would have found it and scrapped it. She had already stripped the wiring in the garage, and pretty soon, any metal in the house was going to the scrap yard and then straight into her […]
We were waiting for rain the day my sister stopped talking. We examined the swollen clouds and waited. Mom and Dad prattled on about the football game that was holding up traffic to I-10, the church talent show, the neighbor’s runaway Chihuahua, the sandwich shop opening up on Fifth, and the sad state of our garden. I […]
The trek across the asphalt and brutal heat coming from the sun made the sliding doors ahead appear as a mirage. New Mexico. New Mexico. Arizona. New Mexico. New Mexico. New Mexico. One out-of-state car in the entire row of parking spots. Probably one in the entire lot. I walked past my therapist’s office and […]
The pavement shimmers with the melted snow rush hour traffic has left in its wake. I cross the street and tuck myself inside the doorway of a closed office building. Flashing lights kaleidoscope from the alley leading to the back of the courthouse. I want to see the police car that will take Noor’s killer […]
It all happened so fast. I keep trying to play it back in my head, moment by moment. But it’s like finding a plot hole in your favorite movie; it only leaves you with this dissatisfied feeling that you can’t shake. So, I’ll start at the beginning and crawl my way to where I am now, staring […]
“We can’t move! Are you crazy?” I yell at my parents. Mom raises one eyebrow, ready to lecture me about being disrespectful. Instead, she turns back to the chilaquiles in the frying pan. The crispy corn tortillas with eggs, queso fresco, and chile verde is my favorite breakfast. Usually, Mom doesn’t make them in August […]
one. after claire dies, i see her standing in my bedroom. when i look up from my book, she’s standing there, staring at me. her hair and clothes are wet and dripping, forming a puddle on the floor at the foot of my bed. her feet are bare. her blue nail polish is chipping. it […]
Listen… On a velvety night in a desert land, a cool wind moved among dunes and glided into a small village. The curious wind lifted the long limbs of the date palm trees, touched the donkey’s fur in the stable, and poked through the open window of Ayesha’s room in her family’s house […]
Most little girls wish for ponies on their eighth birthdays. Angelina Abercrombie, however, was not a typical little girl. She already lived in a mansion, along with a very rich father, a very beautiful mother, a chef, a maid, and her own personal cotton-candy machine. Last year she had wished for a pony, and her […]
In the overgrown backyard of a neat suburban house, there stood a treehouse falling into loving disrepair. Unlike the catalogue-bought boxes in toy stores, this treehouse sat nestled in the arms of an aging oak tree, almost like it had always been there somehow. If you were passing through, you might have mistaken it for […]
Listen. . . On a velvety night in a desert land, a cool wind moved among dunes and glided into a small village. The curious wind lifted the long limbs of the date palm trees, touched the donkey’s fur in the stable, and poked through the open window of Ayesha’s room in her family’s house. […]
The living room is bleached with a raw November light. I sidestep along a pristine white wall, past three perfectly aligned matted prints of geometric shapes, to the gleaming bookcase and consider the alphabetically organized books, all nonfiction. I keep my hands to myself. On Tuesday, Dad’s friend, Brett, lost his uncle, and fifteen minutes […]
My therapist says it’s normal for people to touch themselves. Ew, not like that. I mean, not sexually. She says it’s not weird, and that feels like the permission slip I need to do it whenever I can. I touch my knobby knees. I never feel like they point in the right direction. I poke […]
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