“Look, guys,” Phoebe’s dad called from the front seat. She and her brothers lay in a row of sleeping bags in the way back of the station wagon. “There’s Salt Lake City.” Phoebe sat up to look. Four days of driving across the country, warm air blowing in the windows, had weaved the hair on…

The window sill in Louisa’s bedroom has fallen off again. She is about to push the sill back in place when she notices that the wall is hollow. A feeling comes over her, a voice whispers put your hand inside. She reaches in, feels something smooth, and pulls. Out comes a man’s loafer, the tassel…

1. Here’s what I found: A pith helmet. As a child I thought the name was pity helmet, which is what my mother called it each time she spotted our neighbor — a divorced man with custody of five — wearing one. A paper bag filled with assorted tin cans (though dominated by my favorite…

My job is to follow a set routine, working on a factory line. I take the same train to my workplace at the same time every morning, do the same tasks, and leave at the same time every afternoon. Lately, business has been so slow that while I show up every day, there’s very little…

Not all girls leave a slime trail wherever they go; but the ones who do, Martine’s aunt says, are uniquely beautiful. This is so different from what her mother says as to be almost meaningless, and besides that her aunt hasn’t been to visit since Martine’s skin became glossy as a snail’s. Her mother follows…

I’m only humming, not singing with my whole throat and mouth, not letting the vibrations emanate even from my sharp, pearly teeth — yet still, the boat comes nearer, and the people on board don’t seem to know why. I stop then, and watch, as they shake their heads to dispel my influence, and the…

1. “My BGF teaches English literature at an average, unknown state university, where other than the chili pepper on his Rate My Professor, from which he derives an intense and somewhat perverse personal pleasure, he has not won an award since the fourth grade.” 2. “My BGF has worked at Sports Authority and The Old…

We heard a story at the start of seventh grade, one we’d heard a hundred times before, that took place in the early 1980s, the year Krull came out, a movie we’d only seen on basic cable, the good parts spliced out. Telling the story was a rite of passage meant to scare us into…

What was the name of your first pet? Grover What was the breed of your first pet? Cocker Spaniel Where was your first pet purchased? At a going out of business sale. Every pet came with a collar and an Iams bag. Grover was the last dog in the pen on account of his cherry…

The therapist carries her heart in a small paper sack. Like a lunch sack, crumpled and brown. Her heart is pulsing inside it. Her heart leaves a red splotch on one corner, like a strawberry stain. She thinks of it like an emotional transplant. With her heart in her body, the therapist can’t stop crying.…

Being a nanny was not going to be Manju Gupta’s full-time job forever. Her husband, Krishna, had only just graduated from law school and taken the bar exam. They were waiting for his new job as tax attorney at the firm of Bundy, Willis, and Brown to begin in the fall. She had not so…

I want to ask her if she remembers that afternoon like I do. If it’s sharp like it is in the creases of my mind, tucked into my brain like the way she taught me to fold a sheet, the point so precise that it doesn’t admit anything else. I can say the words in…