Our Squid Mother by E. Ce Miller Our little sister made the discovery that summer. It wasn’t surprising that she would be the first to find out—the only one of us who still climbed into our mother’s lap like Ma was a piece of furniture instead of a woman,...
Smile-5 by Nicholas Brasco I meet McMurphy at the Boom Lift, the one parked next to Building A, at 6:35 a.m. Management’s instructions. We shake hands in greeting, and his big mitt is all rough and chapped, just like his face, leaving my fingers feeling crushed. He...
Piedmonters by Mason Boyles I’m trying to walk myself to sleep when someone stumbles out from the dumpsters behind our apartment and scares the melatonin out of me. “Mothersucker,” she says: Jaylin. I check my reflection in the tint of a Hummer to...
Save Me by Laura Shaine Cunningham The day that we moved in, the man who lived alone in 7A, who would have been our immediate neighbor, jumped from his balcony balustrade. Kit and I, carrying small, breakable objects that Kit refused to entrust to the movers, were...
As Simple As A Wish by Rebecca Pyle There was no problem at all, he said. Because he had studied at the institute with a person of the highest and most exacting reputation in his field, someone who had suffered great deprivations and traveled great distances to extend...
Spawn by Heather Durham Few phenomena are as mesmerizing as a spawning salmon holding steady in a stream. Fire maybe—the liquid undulations of flames in air. But unlike combustion, that chemical conversation between heat and fuel, salmon’s communion with water is...
