The cicadas chorused as Laney pushed off on her bike, past the neighborhood pavement onto the old fire road. Glass vials rattled in her backpack while she kept wheels balanced in thick sand, following the empty trek from Miller’s pond. It was too hot to fish, so it had been just her and the mosquitoes.…

Three days after the funeral the only things left were her ukulele, her monkey, and me.  I understood why no one wanted me or the monkey, but I’d expected the ukulele to go quickly. Kristin’s friends and family had cleaned out her belongings with shopping bags and suitcases, broad-shouldered boyfriends and puffy spouses along for…

Water sloshes between my toes as we run through the rain to the overflowing street, where I clear the sewer drain with my naked foot, three-week-old Margot in her carrier under my slicker, slippery like skin. By the time we return to the house, the sump pump is beeping. Water runs along the basement floor…

Because I was twenty-four, an entitled American full of wants. I wanted, and not necessarily in this order: Because, because. Chris, mentor, knowledgeable expat. Sabrina. Moroccan. An artist. Beautiful, smart, ambitious. She was everything I felt I wasn’t. I loved that in her, that otherness.  But did I love her? And she, me? Answers came…

“I still think we can make this work,” I say, as we approach Walt and Mickey on their floral cement pedestal in the middle of the theme park. She won’t even look at me.  Bronze Walt reaches his arm out to bestow happiness upon us. I almost trip on the cobblestones along Main Street USA.…

My daughter’s finally made a friend. Tara, in her new school. She doesn’t know her well. Doesn’t know anyone well. Tara is an only child. Her father is an orthopedist. The mother works part-time in his office. And when she’s not working, I’m not sure what she does. Perhaps sits home and drinks. I hope…

Jimmy tunes my drums and talks to me about apricots. He’s been eating a lot of them lately. He tells me they’ve been great for his eyes and have improved his digestion, which has been knotty since he stopped doing drugs. He tells me they’ve cleared up his skin, and I can’t help it —…

It wasn’t long before a hole appeared outside of our research station on the ice, and animal ancients began climbing out, beseeching newness.  We watched from the windows, inches thick to prevent the cold, as a 1,000-pound ground sloth emerged, slow as the days are long. It used claws as handholds and footholds to hurl…

He’d missed an email. It was their fault, really. The actor’s manager hadn’t marked the message with one of his usual headings—URGENT, IMPORTANT, SIGNIFICANT. It got buried underneath the other hundred emails Blake received daily, and he didn’t see the instruction to swing by Petco before the party. By the time he got the call…

In the town of Grand Rapids much of the country’s glorious furniture was made. Chairs and tables, cabinets and desks, beds of metal, stools of wood, articles formed from materials that people from other towns didn’t know and couldn’t name. The furniture makers of the river city built with enchantments, with charms and what could…

House #1 has potential. Good bones, the producer tells you. Just needs a dash of paint, granite countertops in the kitchen, some stainless-steel appliances. Scrape off all the popcorn ceiling and tear up the carpet that smells like 1986. But first the crew takes shot after shot of a stain that’s spattered across the living…

I had to go out with him, no question—the same way I’d have gone out with an astronaut or a cowboy or a bank robber if their profiles had popped up on the dating app first. A real character. Next to the miniature briefcase symbol below his name: Official Mascot for the Night Creek Nocturnals.…