Miri Ammerman and her best friend, Natalie Osner, were sprawled on their bellies on the thick, tweedy wall-to-wall carpet of Natalie’s den, waiting for the first-ever televised lighting of the famous Christmas tree. The den was Miri’s favorite room in Natalie’s house, not least because of the seventeen-inch Zenith, inside a pale wood cabinet, the Read more
A gas station. That’s all she needed, and then Jess Abbot could get out of this backwoods mountain town and return to the highway. If she had known the actual town was fifteen miles from the exit, she would have kept driving. But the sign for Pine Lake had appeared just when she noticed the Read more
My story begins on a sweltering August night, in a place I will never set eyes upon. The room takes life only in my imaginings. It is large most days when I conjure it. The walls are white and clean, the bed linens crisp as a fallen leaf. The private suite has the very finest Read more
Her cell phone rang as they were on their way out of the movies. Jo let the crowd sweep her along, out of the dark theater and into the brighter lobby, smelling popcorn and the winter air on people’s coats, blinking in the late-afternoon sunshine. She pulled the phone out of her pocket. “Hello?” “Jo?” Read more
ANNA I always thought of happiness as something yet to come, a goal or target I might reach, or that might reach me, when all the wrinkles of the present were smoothed out, the loops of absence closed, so that contentment would blossom through my life like spring in a cold place. Till then, happiness Read more
Dear Mom, So here’s the thing. And I know you’re going to make some weird big deal out of it because you’re a mom and a nerd and you can’t help yourself. You’re going to, like, make it into a Facebook meme and then needlepoint it onto a pillow because you’re crazy. But whatever, here Read more
Mistakes were made. The first wasn’t even something I did; it was only a germ of an idea, fleeting but infectious. I had just sat on the toilet and was mulling over the day’s to-dos and why-didn’t-Is when a single thought shot past all the rest: I want out. Maybe it was the photo I Read more
