CHARACTERS: BETH & LESLIE are women in their 30s. BETH is dressed comfortably but conservatively. Her hair & makeup are put together. LESLIE has a bolder look. She has a few tasteful piercings & edgy accessories. SETTING: A coffee shop. Today. AT RISE: Beth sits
This is how you move through the world when you’re a young boy: you just move. Forward and back, side to side, and up and down. You climb trees when the days are fat with sunshine. You stomp down in muddy rain puddles. You
The morning goes as it always does: my gramma gently pulls me out of bed at 6 a.m., an hour after she’s already had her Folgers, pursued her lips at the news, and quickly changed the channel to her soaps. I am five years old,
My dead grandfather won’t let me sleep at night. He’s highjacked my Amazon Echo and tortures me at all hours of the night. “Alexa, stop playing music,” I say to the dark of my room as Johnny Cash belts cry, cry, cry. It isn’t the
For half a moment, my brother finally stands fully upright, his arms in perfect T-pose for balance. David looks royal, stiff posture, but also perfectly poised, relaxed, like he’s commanding the swells to rise and recede with his downturned palms; the surfboard glides in the
DING DING DING Out in the hallway, the woman with the sour smoker’s face is ringing a bell mounted on the wall next to the nurse’s station. It looks like the bell you ring to signal you’ve had enough of Navy SEAL training. I want
Our new Chevy van is tan. It has four hot, sticky houndstooth plastic seats and a nest of wool blankets that smell like antique wax and alcohol solution. My dad uses these blankets to protect furniture he repairs and delivers to rich people. He makes
From a distance, it is beautiful. A sparkling blue body of water in the blazing hot California desert. Mountains in the distance. Date palms. The shoreline is white, but it’s not sand you crunch beneath your hiking boots (this is no beach for flip-flops),
I don’t remember agreeing to it. I was only eight years old, but this mattered not, because there was no escaping it. We were off to Crestbrook Bible Camp in the Pocono Mountains with my father’s Bible-thumping family. A two-week retreat surrounded by a picturesque
My little brother and mother both smirk as my grandfather asks me to pray before we eat. I put down the green olive I had almost popped into my mouth and say “sure,” with a facial expression that feigns joy at saying the blessing while