“Mars,” Earnest said, pacing at the front of the class, imagining himself as a professional orator with a doctorate in planets and three best-selling non-fiction books about space. “Mars…”
Earnest stared into the audience at his classmates. He saw Pete. He saw Pete’s myriad of temporary tattoos dancing across Pete’s arms and legs. He blinked and shook his head. He figured it was just another one ...
Tiffany watched the small, white ball arch into the air and speed away, getting smaller and smaller. She scowled. She despised the plain, white golf balls that her daddy used. For every occasion, she brought him new golf balls with bright, bold colors and unusual designs, but he always chose the white ones to golf with.
“How could I risk losing something my sweet little girl gave to me,”...
In the hottest days of summer, I feel a chill, walking down the staircase of my memory. I tightly grip the railing as if my quickly-beating heart might knock me off balance. I crane my neck to stare down the steps at the spot that I might fall.
Every footstep sounds loudly and then echoes, echoes, echoes…
With every step, I smell more of the dusty, musty basement smell in the dry air that doesn’...
“Haven’t you ever heard of a day job?” Dad asked. “Listen to me. Take this job. See how it goes. Make some money until your singing career takes off. Do this for me. Please.”
So here I was, sitting at an actual desk, in an actual office, wearing an actual skirt—an infuriatingly uncomfortable skirt. I grabbed the edge of my pencil skirt and tried to move it into a more comfortable position. Then, ...
Once upon a time, there lived a prince who loved to paint.
He painted the sky when the sun rose up into it in the morning. He painted the rain when it thundered down onto the stone pathways in his castle courtyards. He painted the squirrels and the chipmunks and the ducks and the birds and the flies and the ants and the rats when they scurried by the walls of his castle.
“Would you be interested—” Trevor asked, breaking his sentence and breaking our eye contact in the same moment, “—in eating dinner together sometime?”
I held my breath as I stared at him while he looked anywhere but at me. I could hear my heart beating louder now as I worried that this moment would pass before I could respond. I had never explained to him how time moved strangely for me. I didn’t...
