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
Kelsey draws an invisible line on the kitchen floor, all the way around so that when she straightens, she stands in an imaginary circle. “There,” she says to Kyle, “That’s my line in the sand. Don’t cross it.” Kyle crosses… Continue Reading
Justin spent hours talking to his tattoo, Jill; and most of the time followed her advice. When he was sad, Jill would do a little dance which always cheered him up. If his friends came over to play games and… Continue Reading
Raheel’s mother Parveen was unmatched for stubbornness but even she crumbled before fate. Yes, she said — the words like a scorpion on her tongue — find a Masood girl for my son. Her sisters had cunningly given birth to… Continue Reading
Dad said there are three simple rules for friendship. One, don’t smoke a man’s last cigarette. Two, don’t drink his last beer, and three, don’t mess with his woman. Easy enough, right? It was early October and mother was on… Continue Reading
I swallowed the key to the door of your bedroom. It was the one you had given me years ago, slender and toothy and that rattled in the creaking brass lock whenever I slipped it in. When I looked in… Continue Reading
Joanna Torrance wasn’t a stalker. On the contrary, she was a sane, attractive, heartbroken twenty-eight-year-old with a whopping new mortgage and all the responsibilities of her job as an emergency care nurse. It wasn’t Joanna’s fault that Hugh Campbell’s house… Continue Reading