Listen up, children. You too, Shannon. Derrick, no pushing. Class, we only get one field trip to the space elevator. Don’t ruin it with misbehavior. Leon, grab Susan before she floats back up the hatch. Maintenance is working on the… Continue Reading
I sat at my desk in Miss Austin’s class, engrossed in yet another book. We’d just been assigned Where the Red Fern Grows yesterday, and I was already halfway through it. I forced myself to detach from the fictional world… Continue Reading
Two hundred and seventy-four days. That was how long Samantha had been waiting. Seconds slowly ticked away as Samantha re-checked the clock. Days felt even longer in school. She tried listening to her algebra teacher talk about theorems and equations,… Continue Reading
As soon as Miss Kate left detention class for the toilet, Edelle scrambled over to Leah. “Flippidy books,” Edelle said, and flung Leah’s hardbacks from her desk, spreading them on the ground. Jaryd sat cowering in his seat, drawing squiggly… Continue Reading
“Welcome to the Academy,” the Chancellor announced. His voice was echoed by the crowd’s applause, whose eclipsing thunder reduced his volume to that of a whisper. I was in that crowd, but clapping softly. When asked by the admissions officer… Continue Reading
The first winter, she was ten. The world was made white. She watched the glass fog up around her face, and her nose grew numb. She closed her eyes and heard her grandmother’s voice from far away, from the summer,… Continue Reading
“My father’s a writer.” When Seth’s turn came around in class he said what he’d been taught to say. He could have more truthfully announced, “My father’s in marketing,” but no, his parents had drilled the writer line into him,… Continue Reading
Leon’s pinky wraps around my pinky underneath the desk. Our hands hang linked in the gap between our laps; his warm, mine cold. Facing forward, I wonder if he’s looking at me. Wonder what sort of eyes go with his… Continue Reading
The dilemma — I knew even as a nine-year-old boy to be a “good problem” — was I’d unwrapped a blue plastic horse from Mrs. Golding during the fourth-grade classroom Christmas party and all the girls wanted horses, as girls… Continue Reading
He still sang Verdi in the shower. She listened and planned to leave him. Twenty years ago, when she was seventeen and smitten, she’d considered his singing romantic: her elegant, cultured calculus teacher serenading her while he soaped his graying… Continue Reading