The crab apples had disappeared from Sophie’s grove across the street last week, but I didn't notice until Sophie got lice. They were easy to spot because she pulled her braids so tight, scalp bright and taut in the hairline, a barren main street that the tiny...

The End Me at his door, trying to convince him I was a good person. But I wasn’t a good person back then, needy and egotistical, kind and then poisonous. On his doorstep that day, David told me I was like a creeping bellflower, a weed people mistake for a flower and...

Nationwide that year, 128 officers were killed in the line of duty. My father is number 87 in the official report, arranged chronologically by death date.  When it arrived in the mail, glossy and sleek like a new car brochure, my mother barely glanced at it before...

They were everywhere: the I.C.'s. You couldn't spit without hitting one. You tripped over them in the street, on the train. The population had suddenly doubled. The wealthy were going in for “minimally invasive treatments,” and coming home with gleaming shiny...

It is impossible to fold the same piece of paper seven times. 1. You wrote inside the lines. Your textbooks neat, unmarked, while ours were brazen with graffiti.  Sometimes, I sat next to you when I came in late. You sat so still, as though you were trying to...