This was awkward to infinity. Alex living here would change my entire routine. I was sharing a bathroom with my boyfriend. How scary was that? I had tampons and pads and everything in there. He was going to be naked in the shower on the other side of...
If you could imagine the color of anger, it had been splashed over every wall. Rage, something dense and seething, was hanging from every chandelier, resentment woven into thick carpets padding the room, hatred flickering underneath every lampshade. ...
Fear is the original sin,” suddenly said a still, small voice away back—back—back of Valancy’s consciousness. “Almost all the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that some one is afraid of something.” Valancy stood up. She was st...
I heard the car door shut and then Fabian's voice. "You won't believe what I found around the edge of your property," the ghost announced. "A cave with prehistoric painting inside it!" I rolled my eyes. That was the best tactic Fabian could come up w...
All right," Mom said. She gave Samuel a stern look,"Now I don't know what's going on between you and my daughter and Adam Hauptman-" "Neither do we," I muttered Samuel grinned "We have it pretty well worked out as far as the sex goes. Adam gets it-so...
The sunrise was the colour of bad blood. It leaked out of the east and stained the dark sky red, marked the scraps of the cloud with stolen gold. Underneath it the road twisted up the mountainside towards the fortress of Fontezarmo - a cluster of sha...
One o’ clock. With her fork she would tantalize the heart of an adoring artichoke, while her escort served himself up in the thick, dripping sentences of an enraptured man. Four o’clock: her little feet moving to melody, her face distinct in the ...
public display and operatic suffering—an in-your-face owning of one’s vulnerability and fucked-upness to the point of embarrassing and offending tight-asses is a powerful feminist strategy. Writing is tough work, I don’t see how anyone can real...
There, Master Niketas,’ Baudolino said, ‘when I was not prey to the temptations of this world, I devoted my nights to imagining other worlds. A bit with the help of wine, and a bit with that of the green honey. There is nothing better than imagin...
My soul is a black maelstrom, a great madness spinning about a vacuum, the swirling of a vast ocean around a hole in the void, and in the waters, more like whirlwinds than waters, float images of all I ever saw or heard in the world: houses, faces, b...
What a storyteller does is *see* more than most of us. We say he's making up his stories, but he—or better yet, *she*—watches more carefully, and then tells us what we would have seen ourselves if we'd just stopped to look." -Leah said—to Nadin...
In the ordinary jumble of my literary drawer, I sometimes find texts I wrote ten, fifteen, or even more years ago. And many of them seem to me written by a stranger: I simply do not recognize myself in them. There was a person who wrote them, and it ...
Never did he once consider directing his hatred toward the hunters. Such an emotion would have destroyed him ... His subconscious knew what his min did not guess-that hating them would have consumed him, burned him up like a piece of soft coal, leavi...
Every night that he watched over her sleeping form, his urge to protect and take care of her grew. And those weren't the only urges. When she'd throw back the blanket and bare her long legs, it was all he could do not to kneel at her feet, kiss her s...
A blanket could be used to say hello to a man who’s not only tone deaf, but also regular deaf. Just wave the blanket up and down, and be advised: If that blanket is red, he’s liable to charge you like a bull. I’d charge you too, if only I had y...
A brick could be used as a cape, when I’m practicing my anti-superhero drills in Grandmother’s basement and defying her wishes to drink her “fresh” chicken noodle soup through a 20-foot straw that runs from the basement up to the attic, where...
Gage is waiting on the makeshift bed when she enters the room she’s been sleeping in. The small lantern in the corner barely lights his features. His shoulders are hunched, his hands clasped together before him, and when he looks up, his face is do...
I got an A on the third quiz in American history, an A, dammit. Last time I got a B up from a C and my father said, "if you can get a C you can get a B, if you can get a B you can get an A."- I got an A and my father said, "grades don't mean anything...
He stands on the stone table and selects a large fig, bites into the skin, then opens it with his fingers. He thinks of a woman's sex, ancient and eternal, no young girl would have such gritty sweetness. Was this not perhaps the fruit that got Adam a...
And then, just at that moment, when I'm no longer sure if I'm dreaming or awake or walking some valley in between where everything you wish for comes true, I feel the flutter of his lips on mine, but it's too late, I'm slipping, I'm gone, he's gone, ...
But when you love somebody, things don't always go the way you want them to. Sometimes you have to stick through adversity and not give up. You know, I think love can be a test. When it gets difficult, that's when we learn if our love is real, and if...
