Fiction

Before she left, Nancy White Feather told Charlie Good Thunder a lot of things–some wistful, some stone-faced angry: “You have got a lot of things on your mind, but–most of all–you have got horses on the brain–forever on the brain.

One of the first things I did after my father died and the vast wealth he had spent his life accumulating came cascading down into my hands was to go and visit Valencia.

Later that day, someone would claim to have seen a surface-to-air missile strike the plane. Another witness on the ground would claim two or three missiles, he couldn’t be sure.

It was 10:30, they’d been searching the flat fields west of town only an hour, and already she needed to rest. Emily looked at her father, sweat glistening across his forehead, his skin flushed.

There are over five hundred diseases that list headaches as a symptom, from hangovers to brain tumors to the bubonic plague.

Jade had been in the bathroom far too long given that it should have only taken a second to inhale the stuff I’d just given her, and I fingered the top bill in my pocket, the hundred bucks she’d given me for it …

The man who drives the gas truck is built like a fireplug. He’s got a shaved head and goatee. He paces in front of his rig while it idles. I’m in his way. I’m parked over the underground tanks, filling my tires with air. Not only do I drive a Prius, but I look like

My father killed Albert Miller on Saturday, June 4th, 1851, an afternoon of high sky and unforgiving sun.

For two years Eileen lived in Queen’s Crescent, on the southern edge of Hampstead Heath, in the ground floor flat of a Victorian semi-detached building, with her landlord living above her.

My mind was far away, thinking about how my big brothers were taking me out to Santa Monica for the Bowie show that night, when I heard it.

We didn’t know what was wrong with the neighbors. Whenever we passed them in the halls they made a strange sound, like a hiss. They never looked us in the eye, either.

I couldn’t go to a movie with a friend because I had to go to my boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend’s daughter’s wedding. The movie was about a serial killer but it was French so I knew it would be okay …

Sylvia never missed a chance to hear Ella Fitzgerald. That night’s appearance at the Apollo Theater was no exception.

I was on Fulton buying gossip books—five for a dollar—when I ran into that actor, Lamont Evans. Didn’t see him right away, too busy staring at the cover of Mocha Dreams, a best-seller by January “Mocha” Jones, the video vixen who’d been married to seven different rappers, two at the same time.

“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.

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.

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…

“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…

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?

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…

Dad towered above, hands on his hips, sunlight filtering through a cross-hatch of sycamore branches, his smooth, pink scalp illuminated and glistening with sweat.

Osvaldo and his homies’ favorite party spot was a place they called The Edge, on the rim of the Río Grande Gorge.

My body didn’t care that I had known he would die. My body planned to relive that moment often in the months to follow. My body had a memory that wouldn’t quit.

Edward often searched for himself in Houraye’s hands. Soft, nut brown hands he marveled at,

Gnats clustered in noiseless aureoles about Jeannie’s father’s head as he dipped water from the barrel on the back of the flatbed truck and drank it in a tin cup.

Where to begin? How about right now?

The Silk City Police Department. I am waiting in the police station in an interrogation room for my father to show up.

Before he left the Philippines to move in with his son, the American doctor, Titong made a bargain with himself: He would burn cigarettes on the tip of each finger before going back to his old ways. Yet, here he was, in his granddaughter’s room, beside her bed, in the middle of the night.

We peeled off our rain gear at the back door of the Grant’s Pass Hotel, wrung the water out of our gloves, and traded our muddy boots for sneakers and moccasins. It wasn’t dark, but it might as well have been.

(Excerpt from Life Without)   Choosing, it’s like a pomegranate fruit. Maxine talked one up once and when she did, I could almost taste it, almost hold it in my hands, like this.

The yard was noisy, the women’s voices rising in unison, rising in dissension, rising sharply into the gathering night that had long ago chased away the men.

When I asked Bird if she would stay for good, she laughed and said You should know by now. Don’t you know what I’m thinking? This was after the fire…

I was Pet Hayle’s one and only call, which shocked the hell out of me…

I’d stopped at a drugstore on 125th Street after school to buy some bubble gum when I heard a scuffle break out and a woman scream…

“Danny died Tuesday,” Parker’s tight voice announces.

“I’m not having a good day,” I tell the answering machine, refusing to pick up…

As the rain poured down, Justin was not looking forward to getting out of the van. He was not looking forward to playing the fake, electric, bugle for the hero that he was being paid fifty bucks to honor…