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Sometimes the phone would ring and ring, and I’d go answer. It was him.

All was hushed and stonily still, like the moon and its lights and shadows.

“I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

When I meet his gaze, he’s frowning, a hint of anger flashing in his eyes. When saw the fury in his eyes, I thought he was going to kill him.

There was a blue wool afghan draped across the back of the couch.

All we knew from my father was that my sister had to be cut from her car.

“I might surprise you,” Mr. Maxi said. Polly hoped he’d go all out.

I felt that this maternal oblivion could be the rest of my life.

In time the squirrel who was my friend is my friend no longer.

Don’t tell him you’re a virgin, says Peggy. You’ll freak him out.

The underworld reached out for your hand and found payment.

If there was any magic in his sad life, it happened on that day.

They danced only with one another and did not speak to white boys.

You don’t feel anything when they cut you, not at first, just the blood.

Despite seeing the other knockoffs, I hoped my dress would be perfect.

When I cried the tears felt so ineffective next to the ocean.

“Go watch the showgirls, Roy,” said Chino. “It’s educational.”

“Rev. MacLean’s been stabbed in Oban,” his wife said, her voice thin.

A body must learn again how to accept the proprietorial hands of a lover.

We had a pact to live outside the adult world forever, and we broke it.

It all started at Phillips Andover Academy when he was fourteen.

It’s all good,” Mila says, meaning, it’s so not, her voice glass-like.

The Kid came back from the post trader’s store with a six-shooter.

“With me for an uncle you don’t never need to be afraid of him, baby.”

We backed up and I kept ripping it at his face, trying to knock his teeth out.

There in front of the house was his son’s ratty old Thunderbird.

I am eleven years old and too young to die, but I am dying nonetheless.

I am eleven years old and too young to die, but I am dying nonetheless.