concluded Elmer Luchterhand, a sociologist at Yale who interviewed fifty-two concentration camp survivors shortly after liberation. Pairs stole food and clothing for each other, exchanged small gifts and planned for the future. If one member of a pai...
I have always lusted after a sepia-toned library with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a sliding ladder. I fantasie about Tennessee Williams' types of evenings involving rum on the porch. I long for balmy slightly sleepless nights with nothing but th...
…There’s forty-two thousand jobs, near ten thousand of ’em got by people like us. Everyone’s gotta eat. Industry feeds ’em. They figure Little Bear here’s gonna clean it up." He squeezed his baby, a dimpled plump girl with tufts of jet-bl...
Rowena Clark and I had met on the first day of our mixed media class. I’d sat down at her table and said, “Mind if I join you? Figure the best way to learn about art is to sit with a masterpiece.” Maybe I was in love, but I was still Adrian Iva...
K, boys, it’s shirts against skins. Lose ‘em,” Lucy said, pointing to the guys and ignoring Thad. “I beg your pardon?” Thad said, aghast. “Why do we have to be skins?” Josh complained. Lucy looked at Erin and they both shrugged and grab...
It is recorded in the monastic rules that a monk once performed an abortion on a girl; the Buddha judged his action seriously wrong, which incurred him the highest offense in the monastic rule. A monk committing this kind of wrongful deed must be exp...
Southern speak is music.” Alessandra flipped a hand through the air, splashing water onto those lickable abs. “It’s country music and you know how I feel about that.” “Be careful, my emo-tastic girl. You’re filling my head with all kinds ...
I don't know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want...
Mr Bott sits down and gestures gracefully to the board. "As you are clearly both fascinated by this text, would you like to explain the significance of Laertes in ?" He looks at Alexa. "Please go first, Miss Roberts." "Well..." Alexa says hesitantly....
That cat doesn't have a lick of sense,' I said, sighing. Well, honey, he's not right in the head,' Dad said, flipping his cigarette into the front yard. I glared at him. 'And just what do you mean by that?' Dad counted on his fingers. 'He's cross-eye...
I wished I was old. I was tired of being so young, so stupidly knowing, so stupidly forgetful. I was tired of having to be anything at all. I felt like the Internet, full of every kind of information but none of it mattering more than any of it, and ...
This was true enough, though it did not throw any light upon my perplexity. If we had heard of it to start with, it is possible that all the family would have considered the possession of a ghost a distinct advantage. It is the fashion of the times. ...
I was deluded, and I knew it. Worse: my love for Pippa was muddied-up below the waterline with my mother, with my mother's death, with losing my mother and not being able to get her back. All that blind, infantile hunger to save and be saved, to repe...
As a little girl I always expected that one day adventure would happen to me—someday a tornado would whisk me away to Oz, or I’d fall down a rabbit hole, or David Bowie would kidnap me and take me to his labyrinth where he’d sing me songs and f...
...We were pulling into the next station, when the woman suddenly got to her feet and made a move to squeeze past me. As her knees made contact with mine, she turned towards me. Her eyes locked straight onto mine, her eyelids pinned back, with a look...
What did I think I was doing? What did she think she was doing? When I want to kiss people in that way now, with mouths and tongues and all that, it's because I want other things too: sex, Friday nights at the cinema, company and conversation, fused ...
There is a certain kind of man who is forever searching. He wanders from place to place, he looks hard into the eyes of women and men in every town, maybe he scratches the earth or wields a gun, remedies illnesses or writes books, and there is always...
Can you identify the source preventing you from feeling good every single day, from loving yourself unconditionally and making your dreams come true? Is it a voice in your head or a gut wrenching ache that compromises your inner peace and doesn’t a...
A smile is hidden beneath the mustache, it crinkles the corners of his hooded eyes. “I didn’t. I have other business in town and I told my friend I would attend to the matter of his son, as he could not do so himself.” “Very kind of you.” �...
I'm not your blue-eyed Czech, I'm just a brown-eyed girl, A little mix of rock your world, And now you'll never be the same. You grabbed me by the hand, I grabbed you by the neck. I changed the game, and your convictions. So is it criminal to steal a...
Do you need help with anything?" he asked with a wicked arched brow. "Maybe with cookies for Santa." Scowling because no one was here but us, I said, "You're a bit late for that. Santa already came." He hadn't moved, but I knew better than to think h...
