“If you were going to date a kitchen appliance, which would it be?” Zach is reading from a book of “what-ifs”—a gift from his little sister—as I drive us eighty miles east to his best friend Bobby’s house.

The bus line ran right into the suburb and stopped about a five-minute walk away from this old house of mine. I’d thrown away all my clothes…

Bobo had met Latch three and a half years before in a bar on Memmer St. on the east side. It was called Little Cairo, and Bobo hung out there because it was just a neighborhood waterhole: no known crooks…

Roger Weaver couldn’t understand why he had to meet his son’s principal when his wife, Myung-Jin, would be there too. What could Trevor have done to drag them both out of work?

“Let’s see how fast she’ll go.”
No pudó creerlo . Eddie managed to fix up his old man’s Chevy, and now the wind was blowing through the open windows on him…

Sarah awoke to the sound of the hinges on the slab-planked door of her bedroom. In the dim light she could see her stepfather…

With me, what you see is definitely not what you get. I never really meant to do it, but I just started out cultivating an appearance that conceals the truth about who I am.

Ciela tasted her lips as she lifted them from Zachary’s throat. Salt. At times, she confused her visions of salt and sand, salt and sun, naïve as they were, foolish as they were, with reality. But this was Zachary’s skin. His heat. His light. His salt.

For the sixth recess in a row, I sit on the red bench just off the playground. I’m supposed to be answering Mrs. Hatfield’s questions about my grandfather. These are her questions for my “write about someone famous” homework.

Small scratchings began to filter through the quiet. I bent my neck and peered through the dimness. My wife was in our closet, pulling a blouse off a hanger. She had not turned on the overhead and there was something ghostlike in her movements, as if she had been there once but moved on, leaving behind only an outline of herself.