By Daneryl Weber

“I think you know why I called you here today, Emily.” 

Emily focused on the gold lettering of the plaque on the desk, trying not to squirm. Dr. G. Ronald Darling, Headmaster, Crucifix Christian Boarding School. The school her parents had sent her to because they wanted to keep her safe. 

Keep her pure, Emily amended.  

She squinted at the gold letters until they went out of focus. Whatever. Dr. D. was so not darling. 

“Emily?”

She glanced up, shaking her head. 

Dr. Darling cleared his throat. “This is going to be awkward. So I’ll just be frank. Have you…are you in trouble?”

Trouble? The word buzzed in the pit of her stomach. He couldn’t know what she had done. Of course not. 

“Nope. No trouble at all.” She tried for a bright smile. 

He was watching her steadily behind the thick lenses of his glasses. 

“Something has come to my attention…” He paused. “Has anything happened lately that, well, should not have? Anything that has made you…upset? Unhappy?”

Emily’s stomach churned, as it was doing a lot lately, a queasy boat on an uneasy sea. How could he know? 

[Read more…] about King of Fears

By Miriam Mandel Levi

The thread dangles from the cuff of Will’s dress shirt, swinging as he speaks, dipping now and again into the hot sauce on the rim of his plate.

Sharon would’ve caught it. She’d have snipped it with a pair of sewing scissors before they left the house. But Sharon is dead: pancreatic cancer, a year now.

If there’d been a child at home old enough to notice, they’d have pointed it out. It was the kind of oversight that would embarrass a teenager, or rouse pity in a young adult. But Will’s daughter is dead too: suicide, three years ago. And his son lives too far away to notice that his father is unravelling.

[Read more…] about Thread

By Emily Rinkema

The day after Jack Carson died, my art teacher Miss Logan asked me to organize his portfolio so she could send it to his parents. She put her hand on my back as she asked me, and we both looked across the room at a table of crying girls draped over each other in collective grief.

“You were his partner,” she said quietly, giving me rights to a piece of their sadness. Jack Carson was the most popular boy in the eleventh grade, and I wasn’t his friend or his girlfriend or his teammate or his neighbor, just the unpopular kid he was forced to sit with in art so that he wouldn’t distract any of the other students. I didn’t even like him.

                                                                                                             ~

Jack Carson was a good artist. 

The first week of class, we worked on still lifes. Miss Logan set up a pitcher and a mug and an apple on a table in the center of the room, and we had to make it look real, with perspective and shading. Jack barely looked at his paper as he flirted with Carrie and Lily at the next table and texted with Zeb and Mark across the room, but during the whole class, he was drawing, and I kept looking at his still life and then back at mine, and it looked like we weren’t even drawing the same objects. 

When Miss Logan circled around to our table, she knelt down beside me and pointed at Jack’s paper.

[Read more…] about Still Life with Floating Apple

By Sarah Robinson

The package was cold in her hands, the freezer door gaping open at her shoulder, frosty air spilling out. There were twelve meatballs, vacuum sealed in a pouch of red sauce. There had once been a stack of pouches just like it, but for the past six months there had been just the one, sitting alone in the corner of the freezer. 

Each time she saw it, the question rose in her mind—how long will they last? She knew the taste would change, that the flavor would eventually diminish, even though they were carefully stored. She couldn’t bear to let that happen. She turned the lumpy package in her hands, using her thumb to melt the frost off of one corner to better see inside. She sighed and swung the freezer door closed, taking the package to the counter.

His handwriting was still on the plastic—written with the black Sharpie she could picture lying in her parents’ junk drawer—love Dad! Enjoy! She remembered the day he had delivered them to her tiny apartment. She wasn’t expecting him and was speechless to find him standing at the door, clutching the little cooler bag in his big, rough hands. He’d driven four hours to bring her meatballs.  

[Read more…] about Meatballs

By John Yohe

I asked Jessica out even though she was a famous comedian with a Netflix special, so you would think that she would have men out the wazoo, but I decided to shoot my shot and risk being that guy who bothers famous people (or women in general). We were in Antigone Books downtown Tucson where I thought maybe possibly she had smiled at me from the poetry section—even though with women you never know because a smile can just be a friendly shield—but I figured most women would say just go for it because how else are adults to meet? So in all bravery I walked over to tell her I really liked her Netflix special. She said thank you. I asked some questions about it, which must have been halfway decent and, in fact, sincere because she answered, so I made my big move asking her if she wanted to go to Harley’s around the corner to get a coffee. 

Dear Reader, she said yes.

[Read more…] about Netflix Special