“Your beard is telling me you care about the planet,” the blonde with the clipboard said.
Sylvester just kept walking, and he tried not to sneer.
He did love the Earth, but not in the trivial way she did. He loved it all, loved it down to the nickel-iron core; wondered, at night, if the center really was a high-pressure crystal, perhaps a gigantic diamond.
Her love, or concern, he expected, was only for the skin of the planet, the puddles that were the seas, and the froth of atmosphere above; and perhaps the cuter quadrupeds.
People, he thought, are so shallow.
The crowds at the corner, waiting for the pedestrian scramble, had him asking himself if you could divide people by class and politics simply by observing their coffee cups cross-referenced with their shoes.…
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Aaron Christianson sat absent-mindedly rubbing the cast on his right arm as Mr. Grimes, the Middle School principal, finished up his devotional to begin the second semester.
“Boys, it’s so wonderful to have y’all back with us. I like holidays as much as anyone, but I also miss you young men when we aren’t in session. For you 8th graders, this is your last semester of Middle School. Make the most of it. I want to finish today with a ‘Christmas Miracle.’ I’ve gotten Andrew Smitherman’s permission to tell it.
“Some of you will remember that Andrew lost his backpack right before exams. Well, two members of the Ames maintenance staff found the backpack during their big cleanup over the holidays. I don’t know where they found it, but they turned it in to Lost and Found. …
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He heard the woman in one of the seats in First Class say, “Really, there’s nothing I can think of that’s more ridiculous than a trilobite. I mean, just who do they think they’re dealing with?”
That being more than enough of that, he crammed his earbuds firmly back in place.
At fifty-two, the man – who, for reference, was seated in the middle aisle, one row in front of the bomb — could afford to sit in First Class but loathed the people in First Class. He remembered stories of Paul Neumann buying all the seats around his, for privacy. This man didn’t have the adoring fans problem, but he sympathized.
His son kept getting little cancers.
The man spent several minutes familiarizing himself with the touchscreen, deciding what rate the coffee should be coming.…
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Sarah only drinks whiskey when she grades. She is otherwise not allowed. By herself. By her friends. Sarah, you become such an asshole when you drink whiskey, they say. It is true; they are true friends.
Sarah drinks whiskey because she has to sometimes not be in love with her students. Because she has to sometimes not be in love with herself. The end of the semester is hard, she tells herself. The end of life is hard, she remembers the hospice nurse saying. They took turns feeding her father morphine and little sips of whiskey and now and then the tiniest nibs of dark chocolate.
Sarah has had to explain to some students that failure is not death. Or is not a big death. Or is not the big death.…
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I planted pills in the garden and watched them sprout. It was growing season. Birds came and ate the leaves and flew off sideways, sedated. My tongue went dry. The truth was, I missed my arrogance: believing that the saints smiled when no one was looking: believing I could be the sun that never slept. But here we are. The pills grew plants with sweet flowers. Birds plucked them off one by one: the birds sang backwards: the birds put their heads in fountains to cool off. I didn’t miss the pills. I was a little sick. Maybe I didn’t want to be seventeen again. Maybe I just wanted to fit into my graduation dress. It’s not an addiction if you’ve got a prescription. The birds laid eggs that didn’t hatch.…
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It was a bookmark during the last week. He hadn’t noticed. Rarely did. She would wait for his Friday night shift. Sleeping neighbors wouldn’t see the taxi. She wondered how it would feel touching down, and if she needed a new book for the journey; something with fresh, unread chapters.
Dog-eared pages scarred novels across his shelf. No care. Fitting. She lived for the quiet hours; long-awaited calm. Silence apart from the soft purring of a cat that wasn’t hers. She craved something of her own; unblemished, familiar. New without being foreign, easy to understand.
Parts of her would remain; fabric dangling from coat hangers, bottled aromas in cupboards, worn letters from happier days tucked into corners of drawers, out of sight. She knew to cradle the essentials of her soul, take them with her. …
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Devon was a difficult patient. Eleven years old when his aunt brought him to me. “He hardly ever speaks,” she said. “But he used to, she told me, before the accident.”
There had been a house fire which killed his brother and his parents; only Devon survived. Devon ran to a neighbor for help. He said he smelled smoke and couldn’t wake his family. The fire department concluded that the fire started in Dylan’s room, possibly from matches.
The aunt was the mother’s sister. It had fallen on her to tell Devon the news and, for now, to raise him. “He says he wants to live in a box,” she said. “That’s why we’re here.”
Our early sessions were unproductive. I was new to the trade.…
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