I was eight when Perry Cole moved into Blacksburg. She was special ed. She was tall with string for hair, and no one even saw her. All the special ed kids were invisible, except when they weren’t and we’d snicker and watch our boys toss paper at them, make kissing...
The boy’s body hit the hood of the Toyota, slammed off the windshield, and then slid, falling out of sight from where Marie stood. She thought it might have been a performance, it happened so quickly, but there was no mistaking the terrible, high-whistle screeching of...
“Next round’s on me, guys.” Charlie Bishop bellied his way to the bar and leaned on it, signaling the bartender. “Boys, I’m cashed.” Jean dug in her purse. “Charlie!” she yelled, sticking some bills under the napkin dispenser. “I gotta go! Pickin’ up Jasmine!” She...
An elderly woman wearing a soft apron sits in the porch swing of a lilac Victorian house. The early May breeze through the mountains lifts a wisp of her gray hair from the long braid at her back. She brushes it aside absentmindedly as she loses herself in the fading...
The ferry pulled into the harbor at dawn, and they watched the sun rise behind the cliffs. The craggy bluffs of Santorini towered over them, exposing layers of black, white, and gray earth, all streaked with dark red, as if sprinkled with powdered blood. She outlined...
“Elvis died on my birthday. My fourteenth. We lived in Delavan then. My mom worked at the club on the lake.” Stirring wretched coffee with a fork while a tinny radio played something that must have been relevant to the assertion, fifty-seven year old Alonzo Johnson...
