When I was in Greenough, Montana, I came across a bear cub. I was off this path, and I thought, If there's a bear cub, that means there's a mother bear somewhere nearby. So I doubled back. If I'd kept going, I'm sure they would have eventually found ...
What was a little dark, anyway? Just no sun, [Petra] reminded herself as her sneakers pounded toward the opening. Just dark, all three fine, she whispered to herself again and again, spinning the words outward into a mobile in her mind. They floated ...
The glow dies down, and she's standing at the end of my bed--the one who's been following me around leaving feather messages. I take in the torn fishnets, plaid mini-kilt, shiny, riveted breastplate with leather straps at the sides and a worn Great T...
Not every woman is obsessed with shoes. But every woman is more obsessed with shoes than her husband is (although that's not too difficult to accomplish, since your husband has exactly two pairs--black shoes that are ten years old and barely broken i...
I Brought My Grandma's Teeth to School I brought my grandma’s teeth to school to share for show-and-tell. Billy showed his sneakers. It was more like show-and-smell. Kevin brought a violin and showed he couldn’t play. Katie brought a snake to sch...
It wasn't about how she looked, which was pretty, even though she was always wearing the wrong clothes and those beat-up sneakers. It wasn't about what she said in class--usually something no one else would've thought of, and if they had, something t...
Nicky turned and bolted. He’d only had about a thirty foot head start and a few were closing ground on him quickly. He cursed his hundred-dollar shoes and his vanity. The shoes looked great, but were definitely not made for running, nor was the sui...
It took me a moment to realize but I was having an epiphany. I was standing in the middle of Times Square wearing nothing but purple tennis sneakers with the laces pulled out, clutching an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s in one hand and a shit-eating...
I was conscripted during the war and even made to do coolie labor. The sneakers I now wear when I work in the fields are the ones the Army issued me. That was the first time in my life I had put such things on my feet, but they were surprisingly comf...
We tilt our heads back and open wide. The snow drifts into our zombie mouths crawling with grease and curses and tobacco flakes and cavities and boyfriend/girlfriend juice, the stain of lies. For one moment we are not failed tests and broken condoms ...
We only came close to dying six or seven times, which I thought was pretty good. Once, I lost my grip and found myself dangling by one hand from a ledge fifty feet above the rocky surf. But I found another handhold and kept climbing. A minute later A...
[as Ryan and Natalie enter the Hilton Miami Airport Hotel] Natalie Keener: How about just not dying alone? Ryan Bingham: Starting when I was 12, we moved each one of my grandparents into a nursing facility. My parents went the same way. Make no mista...
In water so fine, a few minutes of bad memory all but disappear downstream, washed away by ten thousand belly busters, a million cannonballs. Paradise was never heaven-high when I was a boy but waist-deep, an oasis of cutoff blue jeans and raggedy Co...
I stopped looking at the cars after the first few miles. Once I started to see past the exteriors, I saw what lay inside some of them and felt the urge to sprint to the nearest freeway exit. Some people had tried to outrun The Plague by leaving town....
Buggin' Out: You almost knocked me down, man. the word is "excuse me." Clifton: Ah, excuse me, I'm sorry. Buggin' Out: Not only did ya knock me down, you stepped on my brand-new white Air Jordan's I just bought, and that's all you can say is "excuse ...
