The little boy was alone, playing Cowboys-and-Indians outside, when the deputies came. He was six years old. He was pretending to be a cowboy, an outlaw, taking life and land from the Indians, from the innocent. The white jeep came… Continue Reading
The problem with friendships was the invisible boundary lines and the unscripted definitions that everyone seemed to understand. Everyone except Thelma, who found them mystifying. It hadn’t always been so complicated. On her first day at school, Jenny Smith sat… Continue Reading
The smell of death isn’t death; it’s food. The smell wafts from the kitchen, permeates the hallway, living room, and dining room of the old colonial. It travels up the stairs in whiffs of almost tangible threads into the two… Continue Reading
The school bus can fit about eighty students, give or take, but there are only twenty-six that live on my route. That’s the only reason I agreed to get on this horrific hell-machine in the first place; the number twenty-six… Continue Reading
Tea tasted sweet or bitter depending on her mood, though she always made it the same way every evening. It was bitter on this day of mourning. The teaspoon clicked against fine white china decorated in blue ink. The pattern… Continue Reading
“The realtor says your house will be listed tomorrow.” Mom ignores me. We both sit, enthralled by the blank TV screen, in the living room of her apartment. She moved to the independent-living section of this old-folks village six months… Continue Reading
Trust me, you don’t rent an apartment over an Indian Restaurant because you love Indian food. You do it because of a lack of available rentals and to escape the dorms with their alcohol-drenched theme parties and communal bathrooms. Naitee… Continue Reading
Flashbulbs popped, momentarily blinding me. The crowd roared. I shook my head. I shook it again. Blood blotched my chest like large brushfuls of paint. My cornerman fanned me with a luminous towel he almost threw into the ring before… Continue Reading
From above, Tina imagines she and Tony look like fleas on the spine of a slumbering beast. In their drab hiking attire, they’d merge with the landscape were it not for their backpacks — his blue, hers pink. Up close,… Continue Reading
When Rhianna saw the first dead bird on the front step she sighed and bent down to where the bird lay on the morning’s newspaper with its wings outstretched, as if it were still flying; soaring down from the top… Continue Reading