My school bus was Lord of the Flies on wheels, and I was Piggy. Nighttime tears shed the residue of that day’s humiliations. My parents’ variegated forms of “Children are cruel” landed as corroboration rather than sympathy. Their concern quickly sewed into ennui hemmed with
“You are at the age of reason,” Sister said, “ready to understand the mystery of transubstantiation.” She cued them with her ruler. “Tran-sub-stan-ti-a-tion,” the children repeated. Angie spoke it softly, enjoying the roominess of the word, its multiple, mysterious syllables that would teach her how
The goal, someone told me, is to make each day different than the one before. So I heeded the advice and added to my routine that summer half a joint every morning and about a hundred butterscotch candies. For maybe seven months my teeth stung
To whom it may concern: I write to recommend Mr. Anthony Mills, an enterprising young man who served our company last summer as an intern in the Accounting Department. As the vice president in charge of said department, I supervised Mr. Mills in his duties
It’s fists that make us men. Human fingers curl in on themselves, the thumb folding over the outside. We attack, not with open hands, but with the force of the knuckles. We are advanced. I stood in an apartment over looking downtown Chicago with a
The boy in the green sweatshirt has written “keep your daughters home tonight” on the note he gives Eva to pass to Doug French. She does pass it, while Mr. Houpt writes on the whiteboard: “Teens and Violence” in blue letters. No daughters need protection
It was 5:00 a.m. in the neighborhood. Aman was refreshed. Tent shaped within the larger dome of night. Except for a slit showing her eyes, she was blackened in veils. Aman’s hair was still wet. Doing as her superintendent dictated: a shower for the little
Elvis usually gets there early, by 5:30, before everyone else, though this morning he’s running late. The waitress has had to make excuses to both 6 a.m. customers and the bus boy has had to make the pancakes. He’s not very good at it, so
A heavy snow was falling outside the windows of the lecture hall, great clumps of soft white snow. The late afternoon sky was pale silver, darkening to pewter gray. Elizabeth wondered how long it was going to take to dig her car out in the
My grandmother would cook us dinner, chicken, acorn squash, and ice milk for dessert. She was diabetic and had flat blue ceramic bowls of stale candy wrapped in plastic and foil in her apartment. My grandfather would drive us places like the zoo at Central