“The Mystery of the Shattered Goblet,” our mother says when we break a wineglass, doing the dishes.
“Secret of the Missing Algebra Textbook,” she says when we tell her why we can’t finish our homework.(…)
They’re coming for me, gaining ground with every stride. If they catch me, they’ll tear me apart just to see what’s inside. The path—if you can call it that—is uneven and dark. I strain my eyes against it out of habit, but there is no light here. I run faster, propelling myself deeper into the […]
I walked into our shack holding a dead seagull. I’d come all the way from the beach with hunger stabbing my stomach, clutching that bird in my fist and refusing to eat it because Amos needed it more. My younger brother’s dark head jerked up from where he was whittling at the kitchen-table. I grinned […]
We were one of the first to receive the baby doll. Our package arrived on a Saturday morning last September when Kamran and I had been living in our dream apartment in San Francisco’s Mission Bay for about a month. Just a year ago native grasses and weeds thrived in the sandy soil near an […]
We all agree that Michelle K. gets first dibs on the new boy. Her hair’s the longest, and besides, her last boyfriend had a Corvette and was in university. When Michelle K. was going out with him Lisa was all, “But why can’t a twenty-five-year-old find someone his own age to date?” and we were […]
The Girl Detective reads about her death on Twitter. She is surprised. She doesn’t remember much from the night before—a bar with Bess and George. A man. A drink. A struggle. A stumble home in the dark—but she is The Girl Detective. She can’t be dead. She has hamburgers already pattied for dinner tonight. She […]
There came an evening when, returning home from filling his lungs with rank seaside air, Abel Crane noticed a light in his living room window. The sight froze him. He had never seen a room of his house lit from outside before. Finally, he removed his spectacles and wiped their lenses on the quarters of […]
First exposure There’s a convertible in the scrap yard covered in “PSYCHOLOGY RULEZ” and “Radio Nil Midnight Sessions” stickers. The owner must have been a fan of Grant’s show. We settle across the leather backseat with a squeak as the tape starts its loop over again. The top is down, and the stars and heat […]
Dirt crawled under Zuzi’s fingernail as she traced another letter into the shack floor, her secret game. When the door swung open, she hastily smoothed away the evidence. It could put her and Mama in danger. She couldn’t say why, but she certainly felt it. A mass, tangled as her hair, stuck in her throat. […]
