As if covered in invisible glaze, her bread bakes pink. She buys new flour, new yeast, sends it into the oven a butter yellow moon. Still it comes out pink, a darker shade each time. "It must be the water here. We'll get filtered; don't eat it," her husband...
These days, when I pull up the old photographs, most people still attribute the resemblance between Lydia Lissing and me to the uniforms. My husband, who has always refused to see it, has never gotten past this first reluctance. “You all look like...
waiting to cross. My heart tick, ticking like a stupid clock. Eddie and his dark hair forest, his blue eye ocean. Eddie, who is only 15. But to me, he is a man. In five years, I will catch up. By then, I will be beautiful. My hair will be a riverflow. Eddie...
It was a bright, gray day with no breeze, and she had just finished digging a grave. She’d woken that morning and her turtle had not. How should she feel on this first day without Tulip? Or on all the days without Tulip to come? Sad, probably. But sometimes being with...
Bette was stirring her coffee when she saw the postcard, tucked between a large print arthritis monthly and debt consolidation offers. On the front was a rose window. She turned it over, expecting to learn that Jesus loved her, or God would smite her. Finally taking a...
Maggie has clouds for eyes. Also, she barely talks. Other kids have asked her how those clouds got stuck there, but she just blinks back, clouds churning. My best friend, Bernice Wallers, heard Maggie used to have eyes like ours, that fire ants devoured them while she...
I was the one who took the photograph of the princess with her toes in the mouth of a man who was not her husband. I didn’t mean to take it. I was sent to pap them and I did not want to be there, not one bit. It had been a long day and a hard one. I leaned against the...
These are the things you may not do: You may not hide in or under your bed without speaking for weeks, time stretching cobweb-damp as the bright world rushes by outside.You may not be unseemly in public.You may not develop a drug problem.You may not drive thirteen...
It was the off-season and we were left to the rain that mourned the tourists. Paddleboats masquerading as swans. Swans masquerading as boats. Gone were the slushies and sunblock and hey mom, can we ride these?! Gone were the city stalwarts and country obese that made...
To the centipede I tried to kick down my drain but refused to go. I see you there. Being better than eighty-two percent of the men I've dated. You creepy-crawled out of the drain. I screamed like an old-fashioned actress. High-pitched and startling. Then, I toed you...
The girl detective has just turned fourteen. She will be kidnapped a week before her fifteenth birthday, ice cream in the freezer, balloons wilting on the dining room table, birthday cake gone stiff and dry. The housekeeper will sweep up ashes from the girl...
The meteor fell from the sky and landed in the yard of the couple. It charred the grass and flattened the grill and sent the soccer ball whining until it was flaccid. It pulsed, a white and orange marbled planet, stoic, propelling waves of heat through the...