It started as a joke.
Ralph was one of the few people at the camp who had a vehicle, who had a vehicle that was heavy enough to roll through the massive amounts of snow that often fell here over the course of an entire winter, and whose vehicle was actually fit enough to start on a cold morning.
Sally had a sled. She had a sled and a length of rope, and one day thought that it would be amusing to tie the length of rope to Ralph's bumper and let Ralph take her for a ride. Though Ralph...
Fault.
Such a familiar word.
Im not sure what it means and what it looks like but i can feel it.
I feel it for a long time since i can't remember.
I feel it brings heavy and pain.
People see me, im nervous.
Their pain eyes.
Their sorry eyes.
Their cynical eyes.
Their fellow eyes.
I'm going home.
I look in the mirror to find what people saw in me.
I can't get anything.
Ok, im going to sleep.
...
I wake up.
Remembering that last night i dreamt of my Mom wrote my middle name; Lauft, for hundred...
Delia placed fifth in the science fair. For her project, she sliced a potato in half and put each side in its own tupperware container. One side, she sealed shut with a top. The other, she left open.
On the posterboard she wrote "This is what happens when oxygen affects a potato."
Michael's was next to her. He strung miniature light bulbs with wire to show how electricity works. His posterboard was the sturdy kind, with its three foldable panels. He got first place.
Delia hit puberty at twelve. Michael did not. He ate more french fries than ever. He...
My father was born. The pressed leaves of Limerick brushed from the crib. A mirage shimmers over the pond. Ships and flags and trucks. Red brick stoops on analog streets. Lamps on the corners.
We move and it is 30 years later. Soon the crushed leaves of New York gather. The east coast bleeds in tides, rushing us over the Plains.
In the West, we dry in the momentary sun, then open our mouths for the never-ending rain.
Running, running from the people behind me. I don't have the time to look back. But I know they are after me. I flee along the soccer field once again. As I have done for so many days after school. There words are thrown at me , they hit me like the punch that knocks out the boxer. The though of boxer reminds me, I am not small any more, I have been running through this fields to training, to practice, to learn to fight back.
I turn around, I use my words to shield myself from there words, I...
It wasn't like that. It wasn't. She hadn't led him on. Or him her. It wasn't like she'd planned to have an affair. There, she'd finally said it. An affair. With her boss. Her married boss. Her dreamy, overworked, misunderstood boss, Tim. It wasn't like it was sordid, or wrong. It wasn't like they'd been indiscreet. It wasn't like any of her colleagues had known. It wasn't like she'd expected him to break it Off. It wasn't like he wasn't kind. The bastard.
"Tim, you bastard. Why do you care enough to want an end to spare your wife?"
It...
"I hate him. He could get hit by a car randomly in the street, and it wouldn't matter to me. It would probably make my days better."
Anyway, it happened. It would. And so then the whole school was plunged into mourning of varying depths. Mourning of the grievous type, and mourning of the more celebratory kind.
Let's be honest. He made everyone's life miserable. He never bothered to even sit. His room was the hallway, not a desk.
The administrator who suspended him that day couldn't stop questioning himself: could I have done more? Should I have done it?...
"Mallard duck," she said, just before she placed the binoculars back down on the car hood. "No doubt about it."
This was the third time she had drug my out to this place to observe ducks. Or, in her words, to "administer some duck justice."
"Do we really need to be here this early in the morning," I asked. "I didn't sleep very well."
"This is when they're most active," she told me. "This is when they feed most, and that's when they pick on him."
"Him" was a duck with, so she said, a clipped wing of some sort....
If money was the root of all evil, then wine must surely be a close second.
Jasper gazed through the rosy depths of the wine glass in his hand, observing the scene beyond with quiet detachment. Wine had always mellowed him, left him with a feeling a pleasurable distance from his surroundings, as though nothing that happened would effect him at all. He remembered his girlfriend's anger at his apparent coldness when she informed him of her condition, the way she had yelled and screamed and beat her fists against him as he silently took in her news, analysed the...
Finally. Mom would be pissed, dad will be furious, and well, Auntie Selah will have a martini in my honor.
Perfect for me? Good family? Education, potential, background of a presidents son, check.
But he totally does not give a shit about what is most important to me. He refuses to accept my reasoning that animals are here for their own purposes and are not for consumption, entertainment, or anything else. I am VEGAN. He is cruel enough to smile through dinners, arguing with me that this is all very temporary and that as soon as we are married he'll...