After climbing off his bike, I smacked his shoulder. “Did you forget I was with you? Are you trying to get me killed?” “It’s hard to forget you’re behind me when your thighs are squeezing the life out of me.” A smirk came with his next th...
In taking that photograph, I understood something I will never forget: how I wished to arrest all the beauty that came before me. Not the classical beauty of symmetry and exact proportions or the fancy of fashion, which is ever-changing with the seas...
I came with many knots in my heart, like the magician's rope. You undid them all at once. I see now the splendor of the student and that of the teacher's art. Love and this body sit inside your presence, one demolished, the other drunk. We smile. We ...
I fought for you, I fought for us I fought for the memories and the laughter that came upon us, Now here we are, we have become unknown people to each other, Worlds apart in an instant, for what once was is now gone So tell me what your secret is to ...
No matter where you came from, there was something, someone out in the world or under the bed that frightened you as a child. The dark shapes that lurked on the edge of the world, the ones you knew were real because even adults feared them -- because...
Natalie was going to stay at home, cooking meals, baking pies, and making sure their life together was comfortable. When Zach came home from a hard day's work, she wanted to be there for him, not coping with her own stress and fatigue. She knew some ...
She waited, thinking you were different from those who used and betrayed her. She believed you would find her, come charging to her rescue. That belief was as misplaced as the monsters we faced were deadly. The day came she finally lost her faith in ...
Gloria screamed, but nothing came out. She could feel the scream in her throat, but it was clinging there, too scared to climb out of her mouth. Raymond might have screamed, too--he wasn't sure. His face was an exploding red ball--that was what it fe...
So we get a plan," I said. "Any suggestions?" "Blow up the building," Kincaid said without looking up. "That works good for vampires. Then soak what's left in gasoline. Set it on fire. Then blow it all up again." "For future reference, I was sort of ...
The crow cawed again overhead, and a strong sea wind came in and burst through the trees, making the green pine needles shake themselves all over the place. That sound always gave me goose bumps, the good kind. It was the sound an orphan governess he...
Back at the Chateau Windsor there was a rat-like scratching at the door of my room. Vinod, the youngest servant, came in with a soda water. He placed it next to the bag of toffees. Then he watched me read. I was used to being observed reading. Someti...
Ever since the dawn of civilization, people have not been content to see events as unconnected and inexplicable. They have craved an understanding of the underlying order in the world. Today we still yearn to know why we are here and where we came fr...
Something inside Clary cracked and broke, and words came pouring out. 'What do you want me to tell you? The truth? The truth is that I love Simon like I should love you, and I wish he was my brother and you weren't, but I can't do anything about that...
At age nine, I got a paper route. Sixty-six papers had to be delivered to sixty-six families every day. I also had to collect thirty cents a week from each customer. I owed the paper twenty cents per customer per week, and got to keep the rest. When ...
When I first started swinging a bat, I swung righty. So one time, my dad came home, and he wanted to see my batting stance. So I showed him. He says, 'You don't hit right-handed. You hit left-handed.' At that age I didn't even really think about it. ...
I make mistakes, but I am on the side of Good," the Golux said, "by accident and happenchance. I had high hopes of being Evil when I was two, but in my youth I came upon a firefly burning in a spider's web. I saved the victim's life." "The firefly's ...
one evangelical scientist who had felt his doubts falling away from him when he was hiking in the mountains and came upon a frozen waterfall—in fact a trinity of a frozen waterfall, with three parts to it. “At that moment, I felt my resistance le...
It kills me. The way he trusted. LIke the way we trusted before they came and blue the whole goddamned world apart. Trusted that when it got dark there would be light. Trusted that when you wanted a fucking strawberry Frappuccino you could plop your ...
I thought he'd pick me, I know he has kids, but when it came down to it, I really thought he'd pick me." Tears rolled down her face and her nose ran. She sniffed. "I know I'm selfish" "You're human" "I wanted him to abandon his children
He had thrilled to his own power only in the throes of sex, when he didn't have the presence of mind to know that pleasure wouldn't last forever, and in the flush of freedom, when he was too innocent to know he wasn't free. Now he seized the power th...
I've had sex with lots of guys, but I think I did it mostly out of fear. I was scared not to have somebody putting his arms around me, so I could never say no. That's all. Nothing good ever came of sex like that. All it does is grind down the meaning...
