Bringing Out The Kid In Me Quotes

My mother tells me that when I meet someone I like, I have to ask them three questions: 1. what are you afraid of? 2. do you like dogs? 3. what do you do when it rains? of those three, she says the first one is the most important. “They gotta be scared of something, baby. Everybody is. If they aren’t afraid of anything, then they don’t believe in anything, either.”I asked you what you were afraid of. “spiders, mostly. being alone. little children, like, the ones who just learned how to push a kid over on the playground. oh and space. holy shit, space.” I asked you if you liked dogs. “I have three.” I asked you what you do when it rains. “sleep, mostly. sometimes I sit at the window and watch the rain droplets race. I make a shelter out of plastic in my backyard for all the stray animals; leave them food and a place to sleep.” he smiled like he knew. like his mom told him the same thing. “how about you?” me? I’m scared of everything. of the hole in the o-zone layer, of the lady next door who never smiles at her dog, and especially of all the secrets the government must be breaking it’s back trying to keep from us. I love dogs so much, you have no idea. I sleep when it rains. I want to tell everyone I love them. I want to find every stray animal and bring them home. I want to wake up in your hair and make you shitty coffee and kiss your neck and draw silly stick figures of us. I never want to ask anyone else these questions ever again.

Rooney dropped to her knees. ‘Georgia, I am never going to stop being your friend. And I don’t mean that in the boring average meaning of ‘friend’ where we stop talking regularly when we’re twenty-five because we’ve both met nice young men and gone off to have babies, and only get to meet up twice a year. I mean I’m going to pester you to buy a house next door to me when we’re forty-five and have finally saved up enough for our deposits. I mean I’m going to be crashing round yours every night for dinner because you know I can’t fucking cook to save my life, and if I’ve got kids and a spouse, they’ll probably come round with me, because otherwise they’ll be living on chicken nuggets and chips. I mean I’m going to be the one bringing you soup when you text me that you’re sick and can’t get out of bed and ferrying you to the doctor’s even when you don’t want to go because you feel guilty about using the NHS when you just have a stomach bug. I mean we’re gonna knock down the fence between our gardens so we have one big garden, and we can both get a dog and take turns looking after it. I mean I’m going to be here, annoying you, until we’re old ladies, sitting in the same care home, talking about putting on a Shakespeare because we’re all old and bored as shit.

Along with the trust issues, one of the hardest parts to deal with is the feeling of not being believed or supported, especially by your own grandparents and extended family. When I have been through so much pain and hurt and have to live with the scars every day, I get angry knowing that others think it is all made up or they brush it off because my cousin was a teenager. I was ten when I was first sexually abused by my cousin, and a majority of my relatives have taken the perpetrator's side. I have cried many times about everything and how my relatives gave no support or love to me as a kid when this all came out. Not one relative ever came up to that innocent little girl I was and said "I am sorry for what you went through" or "I am here for you." Instead they said hurtful things: "Oh he was young." "That is what kids do." "It is not like he was some older man you didn't know." Why does age make a difference? It is a sick way of thinking. Sexual abuse is sexual abuse. What is wrong with this picture? It brings tears to my eyes the way my relatives have reacted to this and cannot accept the truth. Denial is where they would rather stay.

The kid moved, and Judith dropped her lunch tray on the table and took her seat. "Would you like to swap lunches?" she asked me. "Yours looks so much better than mine." I was holding a mashed-up tunafish sand-wich. "This?" I asked, waving it. Half the tunafish fell out of the soggy bread. "Yum!" Judith exclaimed. "Want my pizza, Sam? Here. Take it." She slid her tray in front of me. "You bring great lunches. I wish my mum packed lunches like yours." I could see Cory staring at me , his eyes wide with disbelief. I really couldn't believe it, either. All Judith wanted from the world was to be exactly like me!

It was-this always seems to shock people all over again- a happy childhood. For the first few months I spent a lot of time at the bottom of the garden, crying till I threw up and yelling rude words at the neighborhood kids who tried to make friends. But children are pragmatic, they come alive and kicking out of a whole lot worse than orphanhood, and I could only hold out so long against the fact that nothing would bring my parents back and against the thousand vivid things around me, Emma-next-door hanging over the wall and my new bike glinting red in the sunshine and the half-wild kittens in the garden shed, all fidgeting insistently while they waited for me to wake up again and come out to play. I found out early that you can throw yourself away, missing what you've lost.

Amador and Bianca have a great life that I'm only a little jealous of. They have two kids they bring to see me. His daughter, Ashlee, is almost five now. She has asked me to marry her when I get out. It feels kind of weird since she calls me Uncle Reyes and incest is frowned upon, but who am I to argue with true love?

I’m kind of hoping it will end like this. You made me happy. Very happy. But…you deserve everything. Wife, kids, a white picket fence.” “And I’ll have all of it. With you.” “You know that can’t happen with me.” “Then it can’t happen with anyone. There won’t be a next Rosie. And there won’t be another story like ours. This is it, Rose LeBlanc. And this is us. If there is no you, then there is no me.” “You know, I always hated Romeo and Juliet . The play. The movie. The very idea. It was tragic, all right. Tragically stupid. I mean, they were what? Thirteen? Sixteen? What a waste of life, to kill yourself because your family wouldn’t let you get hitched. But Romeo and Juliet were right. I was the next eleven years killing myself slowly while I grieved for you. Then you came back, and I still thought it was just a fascination. But now that I know…” “Now that I know that it can only ever be you, you’re going to get better for me so Earth won’t explode. Can you do that, Sirius? I promise not to leave this room until you get out. Not even for a shower. Not even to get you your chocolate chip cookies. I’ll get someone to drive all the way to New York and bring them for you.” “I love you.” Rosie’s tears curtained her vision. “I love you, Baby LeBlanc,” I said. “So fucking much. You taught me how to love. How well did I do?” “A-plus,” she whispered. “You aced it. Can you promise me something?” “Anything.” “ Live .” “Not without you.” “And have kids. Lots of them. They’re fun.” “Rosie…” “I’m not afraid. I got what I wanted from this life. You .” “Rosie.” “I love you, Earth. You were good to me.” “Rose!” Her eyes closed, the door opened, the sound on her monitor went off, and my heart disintegrated. Piece. By piece. By piece.

Barry, let me give you a history lesson, Ladybird Hope-style. When the Vietnamese got kids hooked on drugs and we had to fight a war to stop it, did we give in? No! We said, “Crack is wack!” and we made sure everybody could have guns instead of drugs. Back before the British were our friends, and they had a mean king who made us pay too much tax instead of just having hot princes who go to nightclubs, they wanted to keep us from bringing freedom to the people of Mexico and making it a state, and George Washington had to chop down that cherry tree and write the “Star-Spangled Banner,” and that’s the reason we fought World War II, and why we keep fighting, because those freedom-hating people out there want to take away our right to be rich and good-lookin’ and have gated communities and designer sweatpants like the ones from my Ladybird Hope Don’t Sweat it line, and they want us all to learn to speak Muslim and let the lawyers stop us from teaching about Adam and Eve and that will be the day that every child gets left behind.

My mother tells me that when I meet someone I like, I have to ask them three questions: 1. what are you afraid of? 2. do you like dogs? 3. what do you do when it rains? of those three, she says the first one is the most important. “They gotta be scared of something, baby. Everybody is. If they aren’t afraid of anything, then they don’t believe in anything, either.” I asked you what you were afraid of. “spiders, mostly. being alone. little children, like, the ones who just learned how to push a kid over on the playground. oh and space. holy shit, space.” I asked you if you liked dogs. “I have three.” I asked you what you do when it rains. “sleep, mostly. sometimes I sit at the window and watch the rain droplets race. I make a shelter out of plastic in my backyard for all the stray animals; leave them food and a place to sleep.” he smiled like he knew. like his mom told him the same thing. “how about you?” me? I’m scared of everything. of the hole in the o-zone layer, of the lady next door who never smiles at her dog, and especially of all the secrets the government must be breaking it’s back trying to keep from us. I love dogs so much, you have no idea. I sleep when it rains. I want to tell everyone I love them. I want to find every stray animal and bring them home. I want to wake up in your hair and make you shitty coffee and kiss your neck and draw silly stick figures of us. I never want to ask anyone else these questions ever again.

Know that...there's plenty of food and of course popcorn on the dining-room table. Just...help yourself. If that runs out just let me know. Don't panic. And there's coffee, both caff and decaf, and soft drinks and juice in the kitchen, and plenty of ice in the freezer so...let me know if you have any questions with that.' And lastly, since I have you all here in one place, I have something to share with you. Along the garden ways just now...I too heard the flowers speak. They told me that our family garden has all but turned to sand. I want you to know I've watered and nurtured this square of earth for nearly twenty years, and waited on my knees each spring for these gentle bulbs to rise, reborn. But want does not bring such breath to life. Only love does. The plain, old-fashioned kind. In our family garden my husband is of the genus Narcissus , which includes daffodils and jonquils and a host of other ornamental flowers. There is, in such a genus of man, a pervasive and well-known pattern of grandiosity and egocentrism that feeds off this very kind of evening, this type of glitzy generosity. People of this ilk are very exciting to be around. I have never met anyone with as many friends as my husband. He made two last night at Carvel. I'm not kidding. Where are you two? Hi. Hi, again. Welcome. My husband is a good man, isn't he? He is. But in keeping with his genus, he is also absurdly preoccupied with his own importance, and in staying loyal to this, he can be boastful and unkind and condescending and has an insatiable hunger to be seen as infallible. Underlying all of the constant campaigning needed to uphold this position is a profound vulnerability that lies at the very core of his psyche. Such is the narcissist who must mask his fears of inadequacy by ensuring that he is perceived to be a unique and brilliant stone. In his offspring he finds the grave limits he cannot admit in himself. And he will stop at nothing to make certain that his child continually tries to correct these flaws. In actuality, the child may be exceedingly intelligent, but has so fully developed feelings of ineptitude that he is incapable of believing in his own possibilities. The child's innate sense of self is in great jeopardy when this level of false labeling is accepted. In the end the narcissist must compensate for this core vulnerability he carries and as a result an overestimation of his own importance arises. So it feeds itself, cyclically. And, when in the course of life they realize that their views are not shared or thier expectations are not met, the most common reaction is to become enraged. The rage covers the fear associated with the vulnerable self, but it is nearly impossible for others to see this, and as a result, the very recognition they so crave is most often out of reach. It's been eighteen years that I've lived in service to this mindset. And it's been devastating for me to realize that my efforts to rise to these standards and demands and preposterous requests for perfection have ultimately done nothing but disappoint my husband. Put a person like this with four developing children and you're gonna need more than love poems and ice sculpture to stay afloat. Trust me. So. So, we're done here.

Do you want to have kids?” I ask. “Sometimes,” he says. “When I’m feeling optimistic.” I bump sideways into him, the skin of our arms sticking slightly from the heat. “Does that happen often?” He looks down his shoulder at me with a slight smirk. “Not often, no.” “So the rest of the time,” I say, “when you’re not feeling optimistic, what do you think?” “The rest of the time …” Another long exhale, his eyes straight ahead as we go back to ambling down the block. “The rest of the time, I think, what if the polar ice caps keep melting? What if medical care keeps getting more expensive, and social security runs out, and housing prices keep rising while minimum wage doesn’t, and what if they resent me for bringing them into all of this? “What if they just hate me? Not because of the state of the world, but just because they hate me. Or what if they’re sick? What if they join a cult, and I can’t convince them to come home? What if they start a cult? What if they get into some heinous shit, and I can’t love them anymore—or worse, I keep loving them even though I can’t change anything? “What if there’s another world war? Or what if … what if everything else goes right, but at the end of my life, they’re sitting in hospice with me …” His voice thickens uncharacteristically, wavering just the slightest bit. “And there are things they wish they could say to me, or hear from me, but I don’t remember who I am, let alone who they are. What if they have to care for me, for years, after I’ve stopped calling them by their nicknames or telling them I love them?

...there's something about telling other people what to ignore that just doesn't work for me. Especially things we shouldn't be ignoring. Kid bullying you at school? Ignore him. Girl passing rumors? Ignore her. Eighth-grade teacher pinch your friend's ass? Ignore it. Sexist geometry teacher says girls shouldn't go to college because they will only ever pop out babies and get fat? Ignore him. Hear that a girl in your class is being abused by her stepfather and had to go to the clinic? Hear she's bringing her mother's pills to school and selling them to pay for it? Ignore. Ignore. Ignore. Mind your own business. Don't make waves. Fly under the radar. It's just one of those things, Vera. I'm sorry, but I don't get it. If we're supposed to ignore everything that's wrong with our lives, then I can't see how we'll ever make things right.

Delilah. We react to each other like the vinegar-and-baking-soda experiments we used to do in science class as kids. Even now she brings out the immature ass in me. But the second she walked back into my life, I became aware of two uncomfortable but undeniable facts: I am lonely as hell, and Delilah Baker feels like home.

They began to invent humourless, glum jokes of their own and disastrous rumours about the destruction awaiting them at Bologna. Yossarian sidled up drunkenly to Colonel Korn at the officers' club one night to kid with him about the new Lepage gun that the Germans had moved in. 'What Lepage gun?' Colonle Korn inquired with curiousity. 'The new three-hundred-and-forty-four-millimeter Lepage glue gun,' Yossarian answered. 'It glues a whole formation of planes together in mid-air.' Colonel Korn jerked his elbow free from Yossarian's clutching fingers in startled affront. 'Let go of me, you idiot!' he cried out furiously, glaring with vindictive approval as Nately leaped upon Yossarian's back and pulled him away. 'Who is that lunatic anyway?' Colonel Cathcart chortled merrily. 'That's the man you made me give a medal to after Ferrara. You had me promote him to captain, too, remember? It serves you right.' Nately was lighter than Yossarian and had great difficulty maneuvering Yossarian's luching bulk across the room to an unoccupied table. 'Are you crazy?' Nately kept hissing with trepidation. 'That was Colonel Korn. Are you crazy?' Yossarian wanted another drink and promised to leave quietly if Nately bought him one. Then he made Nately bring him two more. When Nately finally coaxed him to the door, Captain Black came stomping in from outside, banging his sloshing shoes down hard on the wood floor and spilling water from his eaves like a high roof. 'Boy, are you bastards in for it!' he announced exuberantly, splashing away from the puddle forming at his feet. 'I just got a call from Colonel Korn. Do you know what they've got waiting for you at Bologna? Ha! Ha! They've got the new Lepage glue gun. It glues a whole formation of planes together in mid-air.' 'My God, it's true!' Yossarian shrieked, and collapsed against Nately in terror.

As my wife saw it—as most people would see it, I imagine—an unwritten book was hardly a financial plan. “In other words,” she said, “you’ve got some magic beans in your pocket. That’s what you’re telling me. You have some magic beans, and you’re going to plant them, and overnight a huge beanstalk is going to grow high into the sky, and you’ll climb up the beanstalk, kill the giant who lives in the clouds, and then bring home a goose that lays golden eggs. Is that it?” “Something like that,” I said. Michelle shook her head and looked out the window. We both knew what I was asking for. Another disruption. Another gamble. Another step in the direction of something I wanted and she truly didn’t. “This is it, Barack,” Michelle said. “One last time. But don’t expect me to do any campaigning. In fact, you shouldn’t even count on my vote.” — AS A KID, I had sometimes watched as my salesman grandfather tried to sell life insurance policies over the phone, his face registering misery as he made cold calls in the evening from our tenth-floor apartment in a Honolulu high-rise. During the early months of 2003, I found myself thinking of him often as I sat at my desk in the sparsely furnished headquarters of my newly launched Senate campaign

The very first day, I came up with an obstacle course that everyone could do. The kids had to pick their way through five hula hoops lying on the ground; cross a mat by stepping on four giant, brightly colored "feet" that I'd cut out of felt; and then pick up an extra-large beanbag (actually a buckwheat neck and shoulder pillow) and bring it back to the group. I'd bought bags of cheap gold medals at Walmart, the kind you'd put in a little kid's birthday part goody bag. I made sure I had enough for everyone. So even when a child stepped on every single hula hoop and none of the giant feet, he or she got a medal. A few weeks in, I noticed that Adam, a nonverbal thirteen-year-old, was always clutching that medal in whichever hand his mom wasn't holding. The medals weren't very study to begin with, and his was beginning to look a bit worse for wear, so after class I slipped a couple of spares into his mom's purse. Turning to thank me, she had tears in her eyes. "You can't imagine how much it means to him to have a medal," she said. "He sleeps with it.

In the United States, a four-year-old American kid isn’t obliged to greet me when he walks into my house. He gets to skulk in under the umbrella of his parents’ greeting. And in an American context, that’s supposed to be fine with me. I don’t need the child’s acknowledgment because I don’t quite count him as a full person; he’s in a separate kids’ realm. I might hear all about how gifted he is, but he never actually speaks to me. When I’m at a family luncheon back in the United States, I’m struck that the cousins and stepcousins at the table, who range in age from five to fourteen, don’t say anything at all to me unless I pry it out of them. Some can only muster one-word responses to my questions. Even the teenagers aren’t used to expressing themselves with confidence to a grown-up they don’t know well. Part of what the French obsession with bonjour reveals is that, in France, kids don’t get to have this shadowy presence. The child greets, therefore he is. Just as any adult who walks into my house has to acknowledge me, any child who walks in must acknowledge me, too. “Greeting is essentially recognizing someone as a person,” says Benoît, the professor. “People feel injured if they’re not greeted by children that way.

Eli’s coming with us.” I hadn’t known until I said it. Silence. “You’re crazy,” Vick says. “There’s no way that kid will last until then.” “I know,” I tell Vick. He’s right. It’s only a matter of time before Eli goes down. He’s small. He’s impulsive. He asks too many questions. Then again, it’s only a matter of time for all of us. “So why keep him around? Why bring him along?” “There’s a girl I know back in Oria,” I say. “He reminds me of her brother.” “That’s not reason enough.” “It is for me,” I say. Silence stretches between us. “You’re getting weak,” Vick says finally. “And that might kill you. Might mean you never see her again.” “If I don’t look out for him,” I tell Vick, “I’d be someone she didn’t know, even if she did see me again.

Get it together. It’s just like you, messing up something important to me. I know you’ve gone off the deep end, hanging out with those weirdo stoner kids, but I will not let you bring me down with you. This project might not mean anything to you, but it’s important to me.

As a little kid, blues meant hope, excitement, pure emotion. Blues were about feelings. They seem to bring out the feelings of the artist and they brought out my feelings as a kid. They made me wanna move, or sing, or pick up Reverend's guitar and figure out how to make those wonderful sounds.

of the problem was that Chaos got a little creation-happy. It thought to its misty, gloomy self: Hey, Earth and Sky. That was fun! I wonder what else I can make. Soon it created all sorts of other problems—and by that I mean gods. Water collected out of the mist of Chaos, pooled in the deepest parts of the earth, and formed the first seas, which naturally developed a consciousness—the god Pontus. Then Chaos really went nuts and thought: I know! How about a dome like the sky, but at the bottom of the earth! That would be awesome! So another dome came into being beneath the earth, but it was dark and murky and generally not very nice, since it was always hidden from the light of the sky. This was Tartarus, the Pit of Evil; and as you can guess from the name, when he developed a godly personality, he didn't win any popularity contests. The problem was, both Pontus and Tartarus liked Gaea, which put some pressure on her relationship with Ouranos. A bunch of other primordial gods popped up, but if I tried to name them all we’d be here for weeks. Chaos and Tartarus had a kid together (don’t ask how; I don’t know) called Nyx, who was the embodiment of night. Then Nyx, somehow all by herself, had a daughter named Hemera, who was Day. Those two never got along because they were as different as…well, you know. According to some stories, Chaos also created Eros, the god of procreation... in other words, mommy gods and daddy gods having lots of little baby gods. Other stories claim Eros was the son of Aphrodite. We’ll get to her later. I don’t know which version is true, but I do know Gaea and Ouranos started having kids—with very mixed results. First, they had a batch of twelve—six girls and six boys called the Titans. These kids looked human, but they were much taller and more powerful. You’d figure twelve kids would be enough for anybody, right? I mean, with a family that big, you’ve basically got your own reality TV show. Plus, once the Titans were born, things started to go sour with Ouranos and Gaea’s marriage. Ouranos spent a lot more time hanging out in the sky. He didn't visit. He didn't help with the kids. Gaea got resentful. The two of them started fighting. As the kids grew older, Ouranos would yell at them and basically act like a horrible dad. A few times, Gaea and Ouranos tried to patch things up. Gaea decided maybe if they had another set of kids, it would bring them closer…. I know, right? Bad idea. She gave birth to triplets. The problem: these new kids defined the word UGLY. They were as big and strong as Titans, except hulking and brutish and in desperate need of a body wax. Worst of all, each kid had a single eye in the middle of his forehead. Talk about a face only a mother could love. Well, Gaea loved these guys. She named them the Elder Cyclopes, and eventually they would spawn a whole race of other, lesser Cyclopes. But that was much later. When Ouranos saw the Cyclops triplets, he freaked. “These cannot be my kids! They don’t even look like me!” “They are your children, you deadbeat!” Gaea screamed back. “Don’t you dare leave me to raise them on my own!

Okay, that’s fair,” I said. “But it’s not a contest about whose days suck the most, Auggie. The point is we all have to put up with the bad days. Now, unless you want to be treated like a baby the rest of your life, or like a kid with special needs, you just have to suck it up and go.” He didn’t say anything, but I think that last bit was getting to him. “You don’t have to say a word to those kids,” I continued. “August, actually, it’s so cool that you know what they said, but they don’t know you know what they said, you know?” “What the heck?” “You know what I mean. You don’t have to talk to them ever again, if you don’t want. And they’ll never know why. See? Or you can pretend to be friends with them, but deep down inside you know you’re not.” “Is that how you are with Miranda?” he asked. “No,” I answered quickly, defensively. “I never faked my feelings with Miranda.” “So why are you saying I should?” “I’m not! I’m just saying you shouldn’t let those little jerks get to you, that’s all.” “Like Miranda got to you.” “Why do you keep bringing Miranda up?” I yelled impatiently. “I’m trying to talk to you about your friends. Please keep mine out of it.” “You’re not even friends with her anymore.” “What does that have to do with what we’re talking about?” The way August was looking at me reminded me of a doll’s face. He was just staring at me blankly with his half-closed doll eyes. “She called the other day,” he said finally. “What?” I was stunned. “And you didn’t tell me?” “She wasn’t calling you,” he answered, pulling both comic books out of my hands. “She was calling me. Just to say hi. To see how I was doing. She didn’t even know I was going to a real school now. I can’t believe you hadn’t even told her. She said the two of you don’t hang out as much anymore, but she wanted me to know she’d always love me like a big sister.” Double-stunned. Stung. Flabbergasted. No words formed in my mouth. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I said, finally. “I don’t know.” He shrugged, opening the first comic book again. “Well, I’m telling Mom and Dad about Jack Will if you stop going to school,” I answered. “Tushman will probably call you into school and make Jack and those other kids apologize to you in front of everyone, and everyone will treat you like a kid who should be going to a school for kids with special needs. Is that what you want? Because that’s what’s going to happen. Otherwise, just go back to school and act like nothing happened. Or if you want to confront Jack about it, fine. But either way, if you—

She was thinking a million things, some of which had plagued her even before she'd found out: What if the state floods; we reelect that terrible man; if I'm bad at it; I do it and then I decide I don't want to do it; if I don't do it and miss it; what if someone shoots me in the grocery store, the movie theater, my own home; what about the revisionist histories taught in schools; what if I'm not self-sacrificing enough; if I'm too self-sacrificing; if me and Liam get divorced, shit happens; what if the kid hates me; if I'm cruel; if I really really love it and lose it; if none of this can be sustained, not our love or our planet? What if, in the end, we just dye the ocean and wish it well? For better or worse, she didn't know if it was responsible to bring new life into this world, but she couldn't spend all her time agonizing. She had to keep moving, keep breathing, or else she'd cease to exist, so she gave Pia the simplest of answers, what it could all boil down to: 'Honestly? What will this baby do to me?

Girls aside, the other thing I found in the last few years of being at school, was a quiet, but strong Christian faith – and this touched me profoundly, setting up a relationship or faith that has followed me ever since. I am so grateful for this. It has provided me with a real anchor to my life and has been the secret strength to so many great adventures since. But it came to me very simply one day at school, aged only sixteen. As a young kid, I had always found that a faith in God was so natural. It was a simple comfort to me: unquestioning and personal. But once I went to school and was forced to sit through somewhere in the region of nine hundred dry, Latin-liturgical, chapel services, listening to stereotypical churchy people droning on, I just thought that I had got the whole faith deal wrong. Maybe God wasn’t intimate and personal but was much more like chapel was … tedious, judgemental, boring and irrelevant. The irony was that if chapel was all of those things, a real faith is the opposite. But somehow, and without much thought, I had thrown the beautiful out with the boring. If church stinks, then faith must do, too. The precious, natural, instinctive faith I had known when I was younger was tossed out with this newly found delusion that because I was growing up, it was time to ‘believe’ like a grown-up. I mean, what does a child know about faith? It took a low point at school, when my godfather, Stephen, died, to shake me into searching a bit harder to re-find this faith I had once known. Life is like that. Sometimes it takes a jolt to make us sit and remember who and what we are really about. Stephen had been my father’s best friend in the world. And he was like a second father to me. He came on all our family holidays, and spent almost every weekend down with us in the Isle of Wight in the summer, sailing with Dad and me. He died very suddenly and without warning, of a heart attack in Johannesburg. I was devastated. I remember sitting up a tree one night at school on my own, and praying the simplest, most heartfelt prayer of my life. ‘Please, God, comfort me.’ Blow me down … He did. My journey ever since has been trying to make sure I don’t let life or vicars or church over-complicate that simple faith I had found. And the more of the Christian faith I discover, the more I realize that, at heart, it is simple. (What a relief it has been in later life to find that there are some great church communities out there, with honest, loving friendships that help me with all of this stuff.) To me, my Christian faith is all about being held, comforted, forgiven, strengthened and loved – yet somehow that message gets lost on most of us, and we tend only to remember the religious nutters or the God of endless school assemblies. This is no one’s fault, it is just life. Our job is to stay open and gentle, so we can hear the knocking on the door of our heart when it comes. The irony is that I never meet anyone who doesn’t want to be loved or held or forgiven. Yet I meet a lot of folk who hate religion. And I so sympathize. But so did Jesus. In fact, He didn’t just sympathize, He went much further. It seems more like this Jesus came to destroy religion and to bring life. This really is the heart of what I found as a young teenager: Christ comes to make us free, to bring us life in all its fullness. He is there to forgive us where we have messed up (and who hasn’t), and to be the backbone in our being. Faith in Christ has been the great empowering presence in my life, helping me walk strong when so often I feel so weak. It is no wonder I felt I had stumbled on something remarkable that night up that tree. I had found a calling for my life.

I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, ignoring the bite of the frosty air on my bare skin. I launched myself in the direction of the door, fumbling around until I found it. I tried shaking the handle, jiggling it, still thinking, hoping, praying that this was some big birthday surprise, and that by the time I got back inside, there would be a plate of pancakes at the table and Dad would bring in the presents, and we could—we could—we could pretend like the night before had never happened, even with the evidence in the next room over. The door was locked. “I’m sorry!” I was screaming. Pounding my fists against it. “Mommy, I’m sorry! Please!” Dad appeared a moment later, his stocky shape outlined by the light from inside of the house. I saw Mom’s bright-red face over his shoulder; he turned to wave her off and then reached over to flip on the overhead lights. “Dad!” I said, throwing my arms around his waist. He let me keep them there, but all I got in return was a light pat on the back. “You’re safe,” he told me, in his usual soft, rumbling voice. “Dad—there’s something wrong with her,” I was babbling. The tears were burning my cheeks. “I didn’t mean to be bad! You have to fix her, okay? She’s…she’s…” “I know, I believe you.” At that, he carefully peeled my arms off his uniform and guided me down, so we were sitting on the step, facing Mom’s maroon sedan. He was fumbling in his pockets for something, listening to me as I told him everything that had happened since I walked into the kitchen. He pulled out a small pad of paper from his pocket. “Daddy,” I tried again, but he cut me off, putting down an arm between us. I understood—no touching. I had seen him do something like this before, on Take Your Child to Work Day at the station. The way he spoke, the way he wouldn’t let me touch him—I had watched him treat another kid this way, only that one had a black eye and a broken nose. That kid had been a stranger. Any hope I had felt bubbling up inside me burst into a thousand tiny pieces. “Did your parents tell you that you’d been bad?” he asked when he could get a word in. “Did you leave your house because you were afraid they would hurt you?” I pushed myself up off the ground. This is my house! I wanted to scream. You are my parents! My throat felt like it had closed up on itself. “You can talk to me,” he said, very gently. “I won’t let anyone hurt you. I just need your name, and then we can go down to the station and make some calls—” I don’t know what part of what he was saying finally broke me, but before I could stop myself I had launched my fists against him, hitting him over and over, like that would drive some sense back into him. “I am your kid!” I screamed. “I’m Ruby!” “You’ve got to calm down, Ruby,” he told me, catching my wrists. “It’ll be okay. I’ll call ahead to the station, and then we’ll go.” “No!” I shrieked. “No!” He pulled me off him again and stood, making his way to the door. My nails caught the back of his hand, and I heard him grunt in pain. He didn’t turn back around as he shut the door. I stood alone in the garage, less than ten feet away from my blue bike. From the tent that we had used to camp in dozens of times, from the sled I’d almost broken my arm on. All around the garage and house were pieces of me, but Mom and Dad—they couldn’t put them together. They didn’t see the completed puzzle standing in front of them. But eventually they must have seen the pictures of me in the living room, or gone up to my mess of the room. “—that’s not my child!” I could hear my mom yelling through the walls. She was talking to Grams, she had to be. Grams would set her straight. “I have no child! She’s not mine—I already called them, don’t—stop it! I’m not crazy!

Part of the freedom of being yourself is resisting the temptation to fill every minute with productivity, and allowing a little margin to be bored. I’m learning to practice stillness more regularly. To leave some room for sacred silence when I can. [My husband’s words to my kids in response to their perceived boredom] reminded me of my desire to learn how to be bored well. How to bring my nothing into the presence of Christ, and simply be with him. No agenda, no checklists, no accomplishing allowed. As it turns out, being bored can be super hard work. But it’s the very work of boredom that reminds me that I don’t, in fact, make the world go round. My agenda isn’t the most important one, and many times, may not be important at all. Knowing this is a great first step toward cultivating a lightness of heart.

Margot, can I talk to you for a minute?” Margot pretends to be busy counting out silverware. “Sure, what’s up, Daddy?” Daddy glances at me, and I look back down at the tomatoes. I am staying for moral support. “I would prefer if Ravi stayed in the guest room.” Margot bites her lip. “Why?” There’s an awkward silence before Daddy says, “I’m just not comfortable--” “But Daddy, we’re in college…You do realize we’ve shared a bed before, right?” Wryly he says, “I had my suspicions, but thank you for that confirmation.” “I’m almost twenty years old. I’ve been living away from home, thousands of miles away, for nearly two years.” Margot glances at me and I shrink down. I should’ve left when I had the chance. “Lara Jean and I aren’t little kids anymore--” “Hey, don’t bring me into this,” I say, as jokingly as I can.

No, me, I’m hungry. I’ll work for fifteen. I’ll work for food. The kids. You ought to see them. Little boils, like, comin’ out, an’ they can’t run aroun’. Give ’em some windfall fruit, an’ they bloated up. Me. I’ll work for a little piece of meat. And this was good, for wages went down and prices stayed up. The great owners were glad and they sent out more handbills to bring more people in. And wages went down and prices stayed up. And pretty soon now we’ll have serfs again.

I just care about you so much … but I’ve always got this fear that … one day you’ll leave. Or Pip and Jason will leave, or … I don’t know.’ Fresh tears fell from my cheeks. ‘I’m never going to fall in love, so … my friendships are all I have, so … I just … can’t bear the idea of losing any of my friends. Because I’m never going to have that one special person.’ ‘Can you let me be that person?’ Rooney said quietly. I sniffed loudly. ‘What d’you mean?’ ‘I mean I want to be your special person.’ [...] ‘But you know what I realised on my walk?’ she said. ‘I realise that I love you, Georgia.’ My mouth dropped open. ‘Obviously I’m not romantically in love with you. But I realised that whatever these feelings are for you, I …’ She grinned wildly. ‘I feel like I am in love. Me and you – this is a fucking love story! I feel like I’ve found something most people just don’t get. I feel at home around you in a way I have never felt in my fucking life. And maybe most people would look at us and think that we’re just friends, or whatever, but I know that it’s just … so much MORE than that.’ She gestured dramatically at me with both hands. ‘You changed me. You … you fucking saved me, I swear to God. I know I still do a lot of dumb stuff and I say the wrong things and I still have days where I just feel like shit but … I’ve felt happier over the past few weeks than I have in years.’ I couldn’t speak. I was frozen. Rooney dropped to her knees. ‘Georgia, I am never going to stop being your friend. And I don’t mean that in the boring average meaning of ‘friend’ where we stop talking regularly when we’re twenty-five because we’ve both met nice young men and gone off to have babies, and only get to meet up twice a year. I mean I’m going to pester you to buy a house next door to me when we’re forty-five and have finally saved up enough for our deposits. I mean I’m going to be crashing round yours every night for dinner because you know I can’t fucking cook to save my life, and if I’ve got kids and a spouse, they’ll probably come round with me, because otherwise they’ll be living on chicken nuggets and chips. I mean I’m going to be the one bringing you soup when you text me that you’re sick and can’t get out of bed and ferrying you to the doctor’s even when you don’t want to go because you feel guilty about using the NHS when you just have a stomach bug. I mean we’re gonna knock down the fence between our gardens so we have one big garden, and we can both get a dog and take turns looking after it. I mean I’m going to be here, annoying you, until we’re old ladies, sitting in the same care home, talking about putting on a Shakespeare because we’re all old and bored as shit.’ She grabbed the bunch of flowers and practically threw them at me. ‘And I bought these for you because I honestly didn’t know how else to express any of that to you.’ I was crying. I just started crying again. Rooney wiped the tears off my cheeks.

Your eyes drooled. I saw them.” He was totally perplexed by this argument. Was he not allowed to speak to anyone? “I’m wearing dark sunglasses. How can you see my eyes?” “She’s jealous, Seth.” He looked at Maahes for an explanation. “Why?” Lydia broke off into her hand gestures. “Are you yelling at me, now?” Maahes laughed. “Oh yeah, kid. She’s calling you a lot of names.” That surprised him. “You understand her?” Maahes gestured back at Lydia in the same language. For some reason, it angered and hurt him that they’d cut him out of the conversation. “Are you mocking me?” Lydia flicked her nails at him, then turned and stormed off. Seth had no idea what he should do. He didn’t understand human emotions or relations. Not really. It’d been too long since he had any. Maahes let out a heavy sigh. “You hurt her feelings, boy. You need to go apologize.” “How did I hurt them?” “Think about it, Seth. She risked her life to bring you here, to save you from hell, and what do you do the first minute she leaves you alone? You let another woman flirt with you.

There are human boys here somewhere?” Zoey asked. Aurox’s face scrunched up as he frowned at her. “Not here. Outside—out there. ” He pointed in the general direction of the door to the field house behind them. “Outside the field house!” she almost yelled. “Zo, sometimes I think you don’t listen so good,” Aurox said. Still frowning at her, he continued speaking slowly, as if trying to get her to understand a foreign language. “Two boys. Outside the wall. With the keg. And cups. They. Want. Hot. Vampyre. Chicks.” “Okay, I think I get it.” Stark grabbed Aurox’s arm and started to drag him toward the door and away from Z before she went for his throat, although that would have been funny as hell. “You found two kids, with beer, trying to get over the wall, right?” “See, you listen better.” Aurox patted him on the back, almost knocking Stark over. “But they’re just looking through the hole for vampyre pussy, not trying to get over the wall.” “If you say pussy one more time I’m going to smack the crap out of you,” Zoey said, coming after them. “You can’t come!” Aurox stumbled to a stop. “You have legs and tits!” “Oh. My. Goddess. I’m going to kill him!” Stark stepped between the two of them. He faced Zoey. She’d gone from pale to bright red in zero-point-nothing seconds. “Z, I think this is something that a Warrior needs to handle.” Behind him, Aurox belched, sending a wave of beer air wafting over them. Zoey narrowed her eyes and pointed at Aurox. “You have never been able to drink!” Then she spun around and stomped back to the basement entrance, slamming the door behind her. “She seems mad. Should we bring her a beer?” Aurox said. Stark covered his laugh with a cough. “Ur, no. Z doesn’t like beer.” “Doesn’t like beer? She should. It would make her head feel bubbly and happy.” Stark didn’t bother to cover his laugh a second time. “I wish it worked that way with her, but it doesn’t.” “Because she has legs and tits?” Stark knew it was wrong, but he couldn’t stop himself. “I’m not sure. Maybe you should ask her next time you see her.” Aurox nodded, looking as serious as a drunk could look. “I will.” “That should be fun. But until then, show me where these humans are, and while we’re going there, start back at the beginning and tell me exactly what happened before and after you were introduced to the red Solo cup.

We’re walking to our cars when Gabe says, “Hey, Lara Jean, did you know that if you say your name really fast, it sounds like Large? Try it! LaraJean.” Dutifully I repeat, “LaraJean. Larjean. Largy. Actually I think it sounds more like Largy, not Large.” Gabe nods to himself and announces, “I’m going to start calling you Large. You’re so little it’s funny. Right? Like those big guys who go by the name Tiny?” I shrug. “Sure.” Gabe turns to Darrell. “She’s so little she could be our mascot.” “Hey, I’m not that small,” I protest. “How tall are you?” Darrell asks me. “Five two,” I fib. It’s more like five one and a quarter. Tossing his spoon in the trash, Gabe says, “You’re so little you could fit in my pocket!” All the guys laugh. Peter’s smiling in a bemused way. Then Gabe suddenly grabs me and throws me over his shoulder like I’m a kid and he’s my dad. “Gabe! Put me down!” I shriek, kicking my legs and pounding on his chest. He starts spinning around in a circle, and all the guys are cracking up. “I’m going to adopt you, Large! You’re going to be my pet. I’ll put you in my old hamster cage!” I’m giggling so hard I can’t catch my breath and I’m starting to feel dizzy. “Put me down!” “Put her down, man,” Peter says, but he’s laughing too. Gabe runs toward somebody’s pickup truck and sets me down in the back. “Get me out of here!” I yell. Gabe’s already running away. All the guys start getting into their cars. “Bye, Large!” they call out. Peter jogs over to me and extends his hand so I can hop down. “Your friends are crazy,” I say, jumping onto the pavement. “They like you,” he says. “Really?” “Sure. They used to hate when I would bring Gen places. They don’t mind if you hang out with us.” Peter slings his arm around me. “Come on, Large. I’ll take you home.” As we walk to his car, I let my hair fall in my face so he doesn’t see me smiling. It sure is nice being part of a group, feeling like I belong.

How many did you eat?” I asked. “Eight,” Slug answered, breathing heavily. “Eight quesadilla triangles?” I said, grossed out. Slug shook his head. “No… eight full quesadillas,” he said, again pronouncing it wrong. “Dude,” I said, my jaw dropping to the floor. “That’s, like, um… four times eight… thirty four slices!” Naomi quickly corrected me. “Thirty two slices.” “Thirty two slices!” I repeated. “This kid can pack ‘em away!” Wyatt said, bringing another plate of quesadillas to the group. “Gidgy…” Slug said, reaching for his twin sister, who was scooting away from his greasy fingers. “I might need a stomach transplant after this.” “Gross,” she said. “Don’t touch me. And stomach transplants aren’t a real thing.” “Giiiiidgy!” Slug groaned. “We’re twins! Your stomach is an exact match for mine! Only you can save me! I only need half of it. The other half’ll grow back!” “Dude,” Gidget said, raising an eyebrow. “You can’t have my stomach.” “But what if I need it?” Slug whined, sliding lower in his chair. “You’re just gonna—” And then Slug let out the grossest burp I’d ever heard in my life. It was loud, and it was bad. Like, my eyes started watering. Slug instantly sat up in his seat with a smile beaming across his face. “All better,” he said, reaching for another quesadilla on Wyatt’s plate. “Mmmm, gimme, gimme, gimme!

You're not born into apathy. You're not born into retreat. You're not even born into average. You're born at a massive action level. This was certainly true for me for the first ten years of my life. Man, I was a non-stop massive action little freak. Except when I was sleeping, I was tripping all the time! Like most kids, I was full out all the time with people frowning and hinting that maybe I should bring it down a notch or two and in some cases, many notches. Did that happen to you? I bet it did. Did you do it to your kids? Have you done it to them? Have you killed your kids? Have you told them retreat, be average? Back off? Be seen and not heard? See, until adults started telling you otherwise, you didn't know anything but massive action.

PANOTII LOOKS PUT OUT ABOUT BEING LEFT BEHIND AND dogs my steps as I stow his tack under the deep overhang on the south side of the wizard’s hovel. There’s plenty of grass here, water at the lake, and it’s not that cold yet, despite the shift in seasons. If the rains start before we get back, the horses can take shelter under the overhang. I’m not worried about them wandering off. Not one of them has stepped outside of the large makeshift corral of God Bolt pits since we got here. “You can’t come with us,” I tell him. “It’ll be cold and slippery. And big monsters will want to eat you.” He tosses his head, snorting. “Really big monsters. There might be Dragons. And the Hydra. And I can’t vouch for the friendliness of the Ipotane toward regular horses.” I blow gently into his nose. Panotii chuffs back. “You’ll be safe here, and if anyone tries to steal you, Grandpa Zeus will throw down a thunderbolt. Boom! No more horse thief.” “Zeus may have better things to do than babysit our horses,” Flynn says, stowing his own equine gear next to mine. I glance northward toward the Gods’ mountain home and speak loudly. “In that case, I’m announcing right now that I’ll make an Olympian stink if anything happens to my horse.” Flynn looks nervous and moves away from me like he’s expecting a God Bolt to come thundering down. “She’s not kidding.” Sunlight glints off Griffin’s windblown hair. Thick black stubble darkens his jaw. He flashes me a smile that brings out the slight hook in his nose, and something tightens in my belly. I turn back to Panotii and scratch under his jaw. “You’re in charge here.” His enormous ears flick my way. “You keep the others in line.” Panotii nods. I swear to the Gods, my horse nods. Brown Horse raises his head and pins me with a gimlet stare. I roll my eyes. “Fine. You can help. You’re both in charge.” Apparently satisfied, Griffin’s horse goes back to grazing, shearing the grass around him with neat, organized efficiency. Griffin and Brown Horse were made for each other. Panotii shoves his nose into my shoulder, knocking me back a step. Taking a handful of his chestnut mane, I stretch up on my toes to whisper into one of his donkey ears. “Seriously, you’re in charge. I’ll bet you can even rhyme.” Carver and Kato chuckle as they walk past. Griffin bands his arms around my waist from behind, surprising me. “I heard that.

I'm all strung-out, my money's spent Can't really tell ya' where last year went But I've given up paying my bills for Lent My landlord, he says he wants his rent Fuck 'em! Hey, now, the women they come, the women they go The hens start to cackle when the cock starts to crow Hell, I take 'em in when the warm winds blow But I boot 'em in the ass once it starts to snow 'Cause fuck them! Yeah, got a letter from my folks, and they say they're in debt They say that things are as bad as they can possibly get You know, I haven't answered that letter yet I might use it to light my cigarette 'Cause fuck them! What'd they ever do for me anyway? Threw me outta the house when I was twenty-nine years old and cut off my allowance Fuck 'em! Hey, a woman come around and handed me a line About a lot of little orphan kids sufferin' and dyin' Shit, I give her a quarter, cause one of 'em might be mine The rest of those bastards can keep right on cryin' I mean, fuck kids! Throw up on your shoulder, piss in your lap, Never give you nothing Fuck 'em! You might also like Think U The Shit (Fart) Ice Spice Anuv Jain - Husn (Romanized) Genius Romanizations ​yes, and? Ariana Grande I had a fight last night with a big lumberjack I spent most of the fight laying flat on my back You know he beat me up fair, and that's a fact But I busted his head as soon as he turned his back 'Cause fuck fair fighting! Yeah You know, my junkie buddy got the shakes again He give me five bucks and sent me out in the rain I'm supposed to bring back something to kill his pain, oh Shit, I took the bread and I jumped on a train Cause fuck junkies!

Language brings with it an identity and a culture, or at least the perception of it. A shared language says “We’re the same.” A language barrier says “We’re different.” The architects of apartheid understood this. Part of the effort to divide black people was to make sure we were separated not just physically but by language as well. In the Bantu schools, children were only taught in their home language. Zulu kids learned in Zulu. Tswana kids learned in Tswana. Because of this, we’d fall into the trap the government had set for us and fight among ourselves, believing that we were different. The great thing about language is that you can just as easily use it to do the opposite: convince people that they are the same. Racism teaches us that we are different because of the color of our skin. But because racism is stupid, it’s easily tricked. If you’re racist and you meet someone who doesn’t look like you, the fact that he can’t speak like you reinforces your racist preconceptions: He’s different, less intelligent. A brilliant scientist can come over the border from Mexico to live in America, but if he speaks in broken English, people say, “Eh, I don’t trust this guy.” “But he’s a scientist.” “In Mexican science, maybe. I don’t trust him.” However, if the person who doesn’t look like you speaks like you, your brain short-circuits because your racism program has none of those instructions in the code. “Wait, wait,” your mind says, “the racism code says if he doesn’t look like me he isn’t like me, but the language code says if he speaks like me he… is like me? Something is off here. I can’t figure this out.

From the passenger seat Kitty sighs heavily and rests her head against the window. “What’s up with you?” Peter asks. “The bridesmaids won’t let me go on the bachelorette night,” she says. “I’m the only one left out.” I narrow my eyes at the back of her head. “That’s bullshit!” Peter looks at me in the rearview mirror. “Why won’t you guys let her go?” “We’re going to a karaoke bar! We can’t bring Kitty in because she’s too young. Honestly, I think I was barely allowed to go.” “Why can’t you guys just go to a restaurant like we’re doing?” “Because that’s not a real bachelorette.” Peter rolls his eyes. “It’s not like you guys are going to a strip club or something--wait, did you change your mind? Are you going to a strip club?” “No!” “Then what’s the big deal? Just go somewhere else.” “Peter, it’s not my decision. You’ll have to take it up with Kristen.” I smack the back of Kitty’s arm. “Same goes for you, you little fiend! Quit trying to weasel your way in by manipulating Peter. He has no power here.” “Sorry, kid,” Peter says. Kitty slumps in her seat and then straightens. “What if I came to the bachelor night instead?” she suggests. “Since you’re just going to a restaurant?” Peter stutters, “Uh--uh, I don’t know, I’d have to talk to the guys…” “So you’ll ask? Because I like steak too. I like it so much. I’ll order steak with a baked potato on the side, and for dessert I’ll have a strawberry sundae with whipped cream.” Kitty beams a smile at Peter, who smiles back weakly. When we get to the elementary school and she hops out, perky and puffed up like a chickadee, I lean forward in my seat and say into Peter’s ear, “You just got played.

I say, it sounds like some dangerous psychotic killer wrote this, and this buttoned-down schizophrenic could probably go over the edge at any moment in the working day and stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-180 carbine gas-operated semiautomatic. My boss just looks at me. The guy, I say, is probably at home every night with a little rattail file, filing a cross into the tip of every one of his rounds. This way, when he shows up to work one morning and pumps a round into his nagging, ineffectual, petty, whining, butt-sucking, candy-ass boss, that one round will split along the filed grooves and spread open the way a dumdum bullet flowers inside you to blow a bushel load of your stinking guts out through your spine. Picture your gut chakra opening in a slow-motion explosion of sausage-casing small intestine. My boss takes the paper out from under my nose. Go ahead, I say, read some more. No really, I say, it sounds fascinating. The work of a totally diseased mind. And I smile. The little butthole-looking edges of the hole in my cheek are the same blue-black as a dog’s gums. The skin stretched tight across the swelling around my eyes feels varnished. My boss just looks at me. Let me help you, I say. I say, the fourth rule of fight club is one fight at a time. My boss looks at the rules and then looks at me. I say, the fifth rule is no shoes, no shirts in the fight. My boss looks at the rules and looks at me. Maybe, I say, this totally diseased fuck would use an Eagle Apache carbine because an Apache takes a thirty-shot mag and only weighs nine pounds. The Armalite only takes a five-round magazine. With thirty shots, our totally fucked hero could go the length of mahogany row and take out every vice-president with a cartridge left over for each director. Tyler’s words coming out of my mouth. I used to be such a nice person. I just look at my boss. My boss has blue, blue, pale cornflower blue eyes. The J and R 68 semiautomatic carbine also takes a thirty-shot mag, and it only weighs seven pounds. My boss just looks at me. It’s scary, I say. This is probably somebody he’s known for years. Probably this guy knows all about him, where he lives, and where his wife works and his kids go to school. This is exhausting, and all of a sudden very, very boring. And why does Tyler need ten copies of the fight club rules? What I don’t have to say is I know about the leather interiors that cause birth defects. I know about the counterfeit brake linings that looked good enough to pass the purchasing agent, but fail after two thousand miles. I know about the air-conditioning rheostat that gets so hot it sets fire to the maps in your glove compartment. I know how many people burn alive because of fuel-injector flashback. I’ve seen people’s legs cut off at the knee when turbochargers start exploding and send their vanes through the firewall and into the passenger compartment. I’ve been out in the field and seen the burned-up cars and seen the reports where CAUSE OF FAILURE is recorded as "unknown.” No, I say, the paper’s not mine. I take the paper between two fingers and jerk it out of his hand. The edge must slice his thumb because his hand flies to his mouth, and he’s sucking hard, eyes wide open. I crumble the paper into a ball and toss it into the trash can next to my desk. Maybe, I say, you shouldn’t be bringing me every little piece of trash you pick up.

Her eyes rounded. “They don’t open until eleven.” “Unless you’re me, and you strike up a conversation with the prep cook who starts work at seven.” “Ah.” “Get your mind out of the gutter,” he said, uncurling his forefinger from around his own cup to point it at her. “His name is George and he has a wife and three kids.” “My mind’s not in the gutter!” Well, not since she woke from a twenty-minute midnight doze during which she’d imagined herself stretched out on her bed, Gage standing at its foot, slowing stripping off his clothes. He grinned at her, then reached into his front pocket to pull free a slim camera. Still juggling his coffee, he managed to bring the viewfinder to his eye and snap a shot. “I’ll call it ‘Guilty as Charged.’” “That’s an invasion of privacy,” she said, frowning at him. “I think that blush indicates that you’ve been mentally invading mine.” “Gage!

One of the biggest shifts in the last decade of anthropology, one of the discoveries in the field that has changed everything, is the realization that we evolved as cooperative breeders. Bringing up kids in a nuclear family is a novelty, a blip on the screen of human family life. We never did child rearing alone, isolated and shut off from others, or with just one other person, the child’s father. It is arduous and anomalous and it’s not the way it “should” be. Indeed, for as long as we have been, we have relied on other females—kin and the kindly disposed—to help us raise our offspring. Mostly we lived as Nisa did—in rangy, multifamily bands that looked out for one another, took care of one another, and raised one another’s children. You still see it in parts of the Caribbean today, where any adult in a small town can tell any kid to toe the line, and does, and the kids listen. Or in Hawaii, where kids and parents alike depend on hanai relationships—aunties and uncles, indispensible honorary relations who take a real interest in an unrelated child’s well-being and education. No, it wasn’t fire or hunting or the heterosexual dyad that gave us a leg up, anthropologists now largely concur; it was our female Homo ancestors holding and handling and caring for and even nursing the babies of other females. That is in large part why Homo sapiens flourished and flourish still, while other early hominins and prehominins bit the dust. This shared history of interdependence, of tending and caring, might explain the unique capacity women have for deep friendship with other women. We have counted on one another for child care, sanity, and survival literally forever. The loss of your child weighs heavily on me in this web of connectedness, because he or she is a little bit my own.

Have you found it different having girls in the house?” He cleared his throat. “Oh, yeah.” “Would you care to elaborate?” “Nope.” I looked up from my writing. “If you don’t elaborate, it’s going to be a very short article.” “Look, I’ve already gotten into it once tonight--” “Are you implying I’m hard to live with? Is that why you won’t comment further? Because you think I’ll be offended? I won’t be.” “No further comment.” I sighed, tempted to toss the recorder at him. “Okay, then, we’ll move on. What’s been the most difficult aspect of living with us?” There was silence, but it was the kind where you can sense someone wants to speak but doesn’t. Jason was so incredibly still, as though he was weighing consequences. “Not kissing you,” he finally said, quietly. My heart did this little stutter. I just stared at him as the recorder continued to run, searching for sound. My hand was shaking when I reached over and turned it off. “But you did kiss me, and you said it was a mistake.” “Because getting involved with you is a bad idea, on so many levels.” “Care to share one of those levels?” “I’m living in your house. Your parents are giving me a roof over my head. Your mom brings home extra takeout. I’m here only for the summer. Then I’m back at school.” He reached up, removed the ice pack from around his shoulder, and set it on the table. “And Mac? After we went to Dave and Bubba’s, he comes out to the mound and tells me he thinks you’re hot. And I know you like him, so I was willing to bunt.” “Bunt?” “Willing to sacrifice my happiness.” “You thought you’d be happy being with me?” “Are you kidding? You’re cute, easy to talk to. You love baseball. You make me smile, make me laugh. And we won’t even mention how much I liked kissing you.” Only he had mentioned it. And now I was thinking about it when I really shouldn’t be.

And then, Jane looks August straight on, folds her arms across her chest, and says, “What the fuck, August?” August mentally flips through the plan for tonight—nope, definitely not part of it. “What?” “I can’t do this anymore,” Jane says. She paces toward August, sneakers thumping hard on the floor of the car. She’s pissed off. Brow furrowed, eyes vivid and angry. August scrambles to figure out how she screwed this up so fast. “You—you can’t do what?” “August,” she says, and she’s right in front of her. “Is this a date? Am I on a date right now?” Fuck. August leans against the door, equivocating. “Do you want it to be a date?” “No,” Jane says, “you tell me, because I have been putting every move I know on you for months and I can’t figure you out, and you kept saying you were only kissing me for research, and then you stopped kissing me, but then you kissed me again, and you’re standing there looking like that in fucking thigh highs and bringing me wine and making me feel things I didn’t even know I could remember how to feel, and I’m going out of my goddamn mind—” “Wait.” August holds both hands up. Jane’s breaths are coming high and short, and August suddenly feels close to hysterical. “You like me?” Jane’s hands clench into fists. “Are you kidding me?” “But I asked you on a date!” “When?” “That time I asked you out to drinks!” “That was a date?” “I—but—and you—all those other girls you told me about, you were always—you just went for it, I thought if you wanted me like that, you would have gone for it by now—” “Yeah,” Jane says flatly, “but none of those girls were you.” August stares. “What do you mean?” “Jesus, August, what do you think I mean?” Jane says, voice cracking, arms thrown out at her sides. “None of them were you. Not a single one of them was this girl who dropped out of the fucking future to save me with her ridiculous hair and her pretty hands and her big, sexy brain, okay, is that what you want me to say? Because it’s the truth. Everything else about my life is fucked, so, can you—can you please just tell me, am I on a fucking date right now?” She makes a helpless gesture, and August is breathless at the pure frustration in it, the way it looks so broken in, like Jane’s been living with it for months. And her hands are shaking. She’s nervous. August makes her nervous. It sinks in and rearranges in August’s brain—the borrowed kisses, the times Jane’s bit her lip or slid her hand across August’s waist or asked her to dance, all the ways she’s tried to say it without saying it. They’re both hopeless at saying it, August realizes. So August opens her mouth and says, “It was never just research.” “Of course it fucking wasn’t,” Jane says, and she hauls August in by the sway of her waist and finally, finally kisses her.

ghost. No way am I gonna get bullied by anyone or anything—especially ghosts. “Mattie, you okay?” Mrs. Olson is eyeballing me with concern. I haven’t moved to get out of the car. “All good, Mrs. O,” I smile weakly at her. “Just tired.” Taking a deep breath, I open the door and force myself out. I am not afraid, I chant over and over. The other kids are still at school, so the house is pretty empty. Mrs. O had told me earlier we had a new foster kid in the house, but I’m betting he’s at school too. She sends me upstairs with the promise to bring me a sandwich and a glass of milk. The doctors said no caffeine for a while, so my favorite drink in the world, Coke, is off limits. At least until I can escape and get to a gas station. I need it like an addict needs crack. My room is exactly as I left it, the bed turned down and my clothes thrown into a corner. A simple white dresser and mirror, desk, and a twin bed covered in my worn out quilt decorate the room.

See my coat over there? I want you to look in the pockets.” CyFi’s heavy coat is a few yards away tossed over the seat of a swing. Lev goes to the swing set and picks up the coat. He reaches into an inside pocket and finds, of all things, a gold cigarette lighter. He pulls it out. “Is that it, Cy? You want a cigarette?” If a cigarette would bring CyFi out of this, Lev would be the first to light it for him. There are things far more illegal than cigarettes, anyway. “Check the other pockets.” Lev searches the other pockets for a pack of cigarettes, but there are none. Instead he finds a small treasure trove. Jeweled earrings, watches, a gold necklace, a diamond bracelet—things that shimmer and shine even in the dim daylight. “Cy, what did you do . . . ?” “I already told you, it wasn’t me! Now go take all that stuff and get rid of it. Get rid of it and don’t let me see where you put it.” Then he covers his eyes like it’s a game of hide-and-seek. “Go—before he changes my mind!” Lev pulls everything out of the pocket and, cradling it in his arms, runs to the far end of the playground. He digs in the cold sand and drops it all in, kicking sand back over it. When he’s done, he smoothes it over with the side of his shoe and drops a scattering of leaves above it. He goes back to CyFi, who’s sitting there just like Lev left him, hands over his face. “It’s done,” Lev says. “You can look now.” When Cy takes his hands away, there’s blood all over his face from the cuts on his hands. Cy stares at his hands, then looks at Lev helplessly, like . . . well, like a kid who just got hurt in a playground. Lev half expects him to cry. “You wait here,” Lev says. “I’ll go get some bandages.” He knows he’ll have to steal them. He wonders what Pastor Dan would say about all the things he’s been stealing lately. “Thank you, Fry,” Cy says. “You did good, and I ain’t gonna forget it.” The Old Umber lilt is back in his voice. The twitching has stopped.

Divorced people try to maintain at least a shred of respect for their former spouses. They say, He or she is the parent of my children and I will do it for that reason. This statement brings me down. I always feel defeated after hearing it. As if that's the only reason there is to err on the side of slack toward this person you once loved, slept next to, cried over, made love to, bought presents for, married. I also think it's a lot of heavy webbing to drape over the kids, as if you're offering your tolerance as some hard-earned prize: See how I sacrifices for my children by continuing to endure that freak show that is the other person? I always hope there is more to it. This is a person, after all, whom we pluck out of a crowd of possibilities. Magic attends that choice. Or if that word belongs irrevocably to the World of Disney, then use the word mystery. At any rate, it's a remarkable kind of calculus that makes you look at a field of men or women and quickly zero in on the one person who turns you on most.

It's one thing if he wants to ignore it. I guess that's fine. I mean, I ignore plenty of stuff, like school spirit days and the dirty looks I get from the Detentionheads while I try to slink through the halls unnoticed. But there's something about telling other people what to ignore that just doesn't work for me. Especially things we shouldn't be ignoring. Kid bullying you at school? Ignore him. Girl passing rumors? Ignore her. Eighth grade teacher pinch your friend's ass? Ignore it. Sexist geometry teacher says girls shouldn't go to college because they will only ever pop out babies and get fat? Ignore him. Hear that a girl in my class is being abused by her stepfather and had to go to the clinic? Hear she's bringing her mother's pills to school and selling them to pay for it? Ignore, ignore, ignore. Mind your own business. Don't make waves. Fly under the radar. It's just one of those things, Vera. I'm sorry, but I don't get it. If we're supposed to ignore everything that's wrong with our lives, then I can't see how we'll ever make things right.

Ah, my friends, that innocent afternoon with Larry provoked me into thought in a way my own dicelife until then never had. Larry took to following the dice with such ease and joy compared to the soul-searching gloom that I often went through before following a decision, that I had to wonder what happened to every human in the two decades between seven and twenty-seven to turn a kitten into a cow. Why did children seem to be so often spontaneous, joy-filled and concentrated while adults seemed controlled, anxiety-filled and diffused? It was the Goddam sense of having a self: that sense of self which psychologists have been proclaiming we all must have. What if - at the time it seemed like an original thought - what if the development of a sense of self is normal and natural, but is neither inevitable nor desirable? What if it represents a psychological appendix: a useless, anachronistic pain in the side? - or, like the mastodon's huge tusks: a heavy, useless and ultimately self-destructive burden? What if the sense of being some-one represents an evolutionary error as disastrous to the further development of a more complex creature as was the shell for snails or turtles? He he he. What if? indeed: men must attempt to eliminate the error and develop in themselves and their children liberation from the sense of self. Man must become comfortable in flowing from one role to another, one set of values to another, one life to another. Men must be free from boundaries, patterns and consistencies in order to be free to think, feel and create in new ways. Men have admired Prometheus and Mars too long; our God must become Proteus. I became tremendously excited with my thoughts: 'Men must become comfortable in flowing from one role to another' - why aren't they? At the age of three or four, children were willing to be either good guys or bad guys, the Americans or the Commies, the students or the fuzz. As the culture molds them, however, each child comes to insist on playing only one set of roles: he must always be a good guy, or, for equally compulsive reasons, a bad guy or rebel. The capacity to play and feel both sets of roles is lost. He has begun to know who he is supposed to be. The sense of permanent self: ah, how psychologists and parents lust to lock their kids into some definable cage. Consistency, patterns, something we can label - that's what we want in our boy. 'Oh, our Johnny always does a beautiful bower movement every morning after breakfast.' 'Billy just loves to read all the time...' 'Isn't Joan sweet? She always likes to let the other person win.' 'Sylvia's so pretty and so grown up; she just loves all the time to dress up.' It seemed to me that a thousand oversimplifications a year betrayed the truths in the child's heart: he knew at one point that he didn't always feel like shitting after breakfast but it gave his Ma a thrill. Billy ached to be out splashing in mud puddles with the other boys, but... Joan wanted to chew the penis off her brother every time he won, but ... And Sylvia daydreamed of a land in which she wouldn’t have to worry about how she looked . . . Patterns are prostitution to the patter of parents. Adults rule and they reward patterns. Patterns it is. And eventual misery. What if we were to bring up our children differently? Reward them for varying their habits, tastes, roles? Reward them for being inconsistent? What then? We could discipline them to be reliably various, to be conscientiously inconsistent, determinedly habit-free - even of 'good' habits.

DAY 137 Laser Tag “What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?” ROMANS 8:31 A few years ago my daughter was invited to a laser tag birthday party. She was little, and the laser tag vest and gun were huge, which made it hard for her to play. The first time through, she didn’t do well at all. She was an easy target for the more experienced players, and she got shot—a lot! She was pretty discouraged, but before the next round started, one of the dads handed me a vest and said, “Go get ’em, Dad.” I got the message. I followed close behind my daughter and picked off any kids foolish enough to come near her. By the end of the round, the kids knew that she was no longer an easy target. Her daddy was there, and he was not to be messed with. It was awesome. Her score that round vastly improved, bringing a big smile to her face. When we go into the arena alone, it’s easy to get picked on, singled out, and told that we are destined to fail. But when we go into battle with our heavenly Father’s protection and covering, everything changes. Not only do we have a chance to stay alive, we have a guaranteed win. PRAYER Thank you, Father, for fighting for me, keeping me safe, and helping me come through as a victor. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Ballad" Oh dream, why do you do me this way? Again, with the digging, again with the digging up. Once more with the shovels. Once more, the shovels full of dirt. The vault lid. The prying. The damp boards. Mother beside me. Like she’s an old hat at this. Like all she’s got left is curiosity. Like curiosity didn’t kill the red cat. Such a sweet, gentle cat it was. Here we go again, dream. Mother, wearing her take-out-the-garbage coat. I haven’t seen that coat in years. The coat she wore to pick me up from school early. She appeared at the back of the classroom, early. Go with your mother, teacher said. Diane, you are excused. I was a little girl. Already a famous actress. I looked at the other kids. I acted lucky. Though everyone knows what an early pick-up means. An early pick-up, dream. What’s wrong, I asked my mother. It is early spring. Bright sunlight. The usual birds. Air, teetering between bearable and unbearable. Cold, but not cold enough to shiver. Still, dream, I shiver. You know, my mother said. Her long garbage coat flying. There was a wind, that day. A wind like a scurrying grandmother, dusting. Look inside yourself, my mother said. You know why I have come for you. And still I acted lucky. Lucky to be out. Lucky to be out in the cold world with my mother. I’m innocent, I wanted to say. A little white girl, trying out her innocence. A white lamb, born into a cold field. Frozen almost solid. Brought into the house. Warmed all night with hair dryers. Death? I said. Smiling. Lucky. We’re barely to the parking lot. Barely to the car ride home. But the classroom already feels like the distant past. Long ago, my classmates pitying me. Arriving at this car full of uncles. Were they wearing suits? Death such a formal occasion. My sister, angry-crying next to me. Me, encountering a fragment of evil in myself. Evilly wanting my mother to say it. What? I asked, smiling. My lamb on full display at the fair. He’s dead! my sister said. Hit me in the gut with her flute. Her flute case. Her rental flute. He’s dead! Our father. Our father, who we were not supposed to know had been dying. He’s dead! The flute gleaming in its red case. Here, my mother said at home. She’d poured us each a small glass of Pepsi We normally couldn’t afford Pepsi. Lucky, I acted. He’s no longer suffering, my mother said. Here, she said. Drink this. The little bubbles flew. They bit my tongue. My evil persisted. What is death? I asked. And now, dream, once more you bring me my answer. Dig, my mother says. Pry, she says. I don’t want to see, dream. The lid so damp it crumbles under my hands. The casket just a drawerful of bones. A drawerful. Just bones and teeth. That one tooth he had. Crooked like mine.

I was here. I was fine. It was a beautiful day, and I was around people who gave me more love and happiness in a month than I’d had for seventeen years. I would never have to see those jerks again. And today was going to be a good day, damn it. So I got it together and finally looked back down at my best friend to ask, “Did I tell you I stole a bottle of Visine once because I wanted to put a few drops into my dad’s coffee, but I always chickened out?” Lenny snickered. “No. Psycho. Did I tell you that one time I asked Santa to bring my mom back?” I made a face. “That’s sad, Lenny.” I blinked. “I pretty much did the same thing.” “Uh-huh.” I raised my eyebrows at her. “Did I ever tell you that I wanted to have like ten kids when I was younger?” The laugh that came out of her wasn’t as strong as it usually was, but I was glad she let it out anyway. It sounded just like her, loud and direct and so full of happiness it was literally infectious. “Ten? Jesus, why?” I wrinkled my nose at her. “It sounded like a good number.” The scoff that came out of her right then was a little louder. “You’re fucking nuts, Luna. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten-ten?” “That’s what ten means.” I grinned at her. “I said that was back when I was younger, not any time recently. I can’t afford ten kids.” “Still. How about… none?” I glanced down the table again when I heard Thea’s sharp laugh. “Okay, Only Child.” I laughed. “I think four’s a good number now.” My friend beside me groaned before reaching forward to grab a chip, dipping it into the tiny bowl of guacamole beside it. “Look, Grandpa Gus was basically my brother, my dad, my uncle, and my grandpa all rolled into one, and I had a bunch of kids to play with,” she claimed. “Whatever makes you happy, but I think I’m fine with zero kids in my future.” I reached over and grabbed one of the pieces of fajita from her plate and plopped it into my mouth. “Watch, you’ll end up with two,” I told her, covering my mouth while I chewed the meat. “You’ve already got that ‘mom’ vibe going on better than anyone I know.” That had her rolling her eyes, but she didn’t argue that she didn’t, because we both knew it was true. She was a twenty-seven-year-old who dealt with full-grown man babies daily. She had it down. I was friends with my coworkers. Lenny was a babysitter for the ones she was surrounded with regularly. “Like you’re one to talk, bish,” she threw out in a grumpy voice that said she knew she couldn’t deny it. She had a point there. She picked up a piece of fajita and tossed it into her mouth before mumbling, “For the record, you should probably get started on lucky number four soon. You aren’t getting any younger.” I rolled my eyes, still chewing. “Bish.” “Bish.

In the 1950s kids lost their innocence.They were liberated from their parents by well-paying jobs, cars, and lyrics in music that gave rise to a new term—the generation gap. In the 1960s, kids lost their authority. It was the decade of protest—church, state, and parents were all called into question and found wanting.Their authority was rejected, yet nothing ever replaced it. In the 1970s, kids lost their love. It was the decade of me-ism dominated by hyphenated words beginning with self. Self-image, Self-esteem, Self-assertion . . . It made for a lonely world. Kids learned everything there was to know about sex and forgot everything there was to know about love, and no one had the nerve to tell them there was a difference. In the 1980s, kids lost their hope. Stripped of innocence, authority, and love and plagued by the horror of a nuclear nightmare, large and growing numbers of this generation stopped believing in the future. To bring it up to date, I have added two more paragraphs: In the 1990s kids lost their power to reason. Less and less were they taught the very basics of language, truth, and logic and they grew up with the irrationality of a postmodern world. In the new millennium, kids woke up and found out that somewhere in the midst of all this change, they had lost their imagination. Violence and perversion entertained them till none could talk of killing innocents since none was innocent anymore.

to express my differences with the Church. Contraceptives save the lives of millions of women and children. That’s a medical fact. And that’s why I believe all women everywhere, and of any faith, should have information on the healthy timing and spacing of pregnancies, and access to contraceptives if they want them. But there is a big difference between believing in family planning and taking a lead advocacy role for a cause that goes against a teaching of my church. That is not something I was eager to do. When I was trying to decide if I should go ahead, I talked it over with my parents, with priests and nuns I’ve known since childhood, with some Catholic scholars, and with Bill and the kids. One of my questions was “Can you take actions in conflict with a teaching of the Church and still be part of the Church?” That depends, I was told, on whether you are true to your conscience, and whether your conscience is informed by the Church. In my case, the teachings of the Catholic Church helped form my conscience and led me into this work in the first place. Faith in action to me means going to the margins of society, seeking out those who are isolated, and bringing them back in. I was putting my faith into action when I went into the field and met the women who asked me about contraceptives. So, yes, there is a Church teaching against contraceptives—but there is another Church teaching, which is love of neighbor.

The kid in the newspaper was named Stevie, and he was eight. I was thirty-nine and lived by myself in a house that I owned. For a short time our local newspaper featured an orphan every week. Later they would transition to adoptable pets, but for a while it was orphans, children your could foster and possibly adopt of everything worked out, the profiles were short, maybe two or three hundred words. This was what I knew: Stevie liked going to school. He made friends easily. He promised he would make his bed every morning. He hoped that if he were very good we could have his own dog, and if he were very, very good, his younger brother could be adopted with him. Stevie was Black. I knew nothing else. The picture of him was a little bigger than a postage stamp. He smiled. I studied his face at my breakfast table until something in me snapped. I paced around my house, carrying the folded newspaper. I had two bedrooms. I had a dog. I had so much more than plenty. In return he would make his bed, try his best in school. That was all he had to bargain with: himself. By the time Karl came for dinner after work I was nearly out of my mind. “I want to adopt him,” I said. Karl read the profile. He looked at the picture. “You want to be his mother?” “It’s not about being his mother. I mean, sure, if I’m his mother that’s fine, but it’s like seeing a kid waving from the window of a burning house, saying he’ll make his bed if someone will come and get him out. I can’t leave him there.” “We can do this,” Karl said. We can do this. I started to calm myself because Karl was calm. He was good at making things happen. I didn’t have to want children in order to want Stevie. In the morning I called the number in the newspaper. They took down my name and address. They told me they would send the preliminary paperwork. After the paperwork was reviewed, there would be a series of interviews and home visits. “When do I meet Stevie?” I asked. “Stevie?” “The boy in the newspaper.” I had already told her the reason I was calling. “Oh, it’s not like that,” the woman said. “It’s a very long process. We put you together with the child who will be your best match.” “So where’s Stevie?” She said she wasn’t sure. She thought that maybe someone had adopted him. It was a bait and switch, a well-written story: the bed, the dog, the brother. They knew how to bang on the floor to bring people like me out of the woodwork, people who said they would never come. I wrapped up the conversation. I didn’t want a child, I wanted Stevie. It all came down to a single flooding moment of clarity: he wouldn’t live with me, but I could now imagine that he was in a solid house with people who loved him. I put him in the safest chamber of my heart, he and his twin brother in twin beds, the dog asleep in Stevie’s arms. And there they stayed, going with me everywhere until I finally wrote a novel about them called Run. Not because I thought it would find them, but because they had become too much for me to carry. I had to write about them so that I could put them down.

Paul H. Dunn, of the First Council of Seventy, spoke of McKay’s attitude toward those who were outside the mainstream—not in action, but in thought. After spending a decade as a teacher in the Institutes of Religion, Dunn was called by McKay to be a General Authority at the unusually young age of thirty-nine: Here I am a young buck coming into the system, and the circulation is, “Let’s excommunicate the Sterling McMurrins of the Church, and weed out the liberals.” That got thrown around a lot. Even poor Lowell Bennion got thrown into some of that. If it hadn’t been for President McKay, we’d have had a fiasco on Lowell Bennion. There’s one of the sweetest, great Christians of the world. I would be totally surprised if all of heaven isn’t a Lowell Bennion philosophy. There isn’t a kinder, more gentle Christian in the world. And yet there were those in the system who tried to weed him out, because he kept the President McKay kind of vision open…. The George Boyds and the Lowell Bennions kept people in the Church whom nobody else could have. Philosophically, they could go with you on the trip through your frustration in thinking, and bring you back. Not many people could do that. I worked with George for many years down at the University of Southern California. I watched him save kids that nobody else could. And yet there was that element in the Church that tried to get him bumped, because he didn’t teach what they taught. I’ve found in the Church, and this is what gave me great comfort with President McKay, that there is room for all of them, not just a few, not just those here or there, but the whole spectrum. President McKay would say, and two or three times I heard him say privately, and once or twice publicly in meetings where I sat, that “if you would have to take action on that kind of a person thinking that way, you’d better take action on me, too

What’s going on?’ she said. ‘Talk to me.’ ‘I …’ I looked down. I didn’t want her to see me. But Rooney was looking at me, eyebrows furrowed, so many thoughts churning behind her eyes, and it was that look that made me start spilling everything out. ‘I just care about you so much … but I’ve always got this fear that … one day you’ll leave. Or Pip and Jason will leave, or … I don’t know.’ Fresh tears fell from my cheeks. ‘I’m never going to fall in love, so … my friendships are all I have, so … I just … can’t bear the idea of losing any of my friends. Because I’m never going to have that one special person.’ ‘Can you let me be that person?’ Rooney said quietly. I sniffed loudly. ‘What d’you mean?’ ‘I mean I want to be your special person.’ ‘B-but … that’s not how the world works, people always put romance over friendships –’ ‘Says who?’ Rooney spluttered, smacking her hand on the ground in front of us. ‘The heteronormative rulebook? Fuck that, Georgia. Fuck that.’ She stood up, flailing her arms and pacing as she spoke. ‘I know you’ve been trying to help me with Pip,’ she began, ‘and I appreciate that, Georgia, I really do. I like her and I think she likes me and we like being around each other and, yep, I’m just gonna say it – I think we really, really want to have sex with each other.’ I just stared at her, my cheeks tear-stained, having no idea where this was going. ‘But you know what I realised on my walk?’ she said. ‘I realise that I love you, Georgia.’ My mouth dropped open. ‘Obviously I’m not romantically in love with you. But I realised that whatever these feelings are for you, I …’ She grinned wildly. ‘I feel like I am in love. Me and you – this is a fucking love story! I feel like I’ve found something most people just don’t get. I feel at home around you in a way I have never felt in my fucking life. And maybe most people would look at us and think that we’re just friends, or whatever, but I know that it’s just … so much MORE than that.’ She gestured dramatically at me with both hands. ‘You changed me. You … you fucking saved me, I swear to God. I know I still do a lot of dumb stuff and I say the wrong things and I still have days where I just feel like shit but … I’ve felt happier over the past few weeks than I have in years.’ I couldn’t speak. I was frozen. Rooney dropped to her knees. ‘Georgia, I am never going to stop being your friend. And I don’t mean that in the boring average meaning of ‘friend’ where we stop talking regularly when we’re twenty-five because we’ve both met nice young men and gone off to have babies, and only get to meet up twice a year. I mean I’m going to pester you to buy a house next door to me when we’re forty-five and have finally saved up enough for our deposits. I mean I’m going to be crashing round yours every night for dinner because you know I can’t fucking cook to save my life, and if I’ve got kids and a spouse, they’ll probably come round with me, because otherwise they’ll be living on chicken nuggets and chips. I mean I’m going to be the one bringing you soup when you text me that you’re sick and can’t get out of bed and ferrying you to the doctor’s even when you don’t want to go because you feel guilty about using the NHS when you just have a stomach bug. I mean we’re gonna knock down the fence between our gardens so we have one big garden, and we can both get a dog and take turns looking after it. I mean I’m going to be here, annoying you, until we’re old ladies, sitting in the same care home, talking about putting on a Shakespeare because we’re all old and bored as shit.’ She grabbed the bunch of flowers and practically threw them at me. ‘And I bought these for you because I honestly didn’t know how else to express any of that to you.’ I was crying. I just started crying again. Rooney wiped the tears off my cheeks.

last sixteen years Aidan’s detected a shift among spirits. He doesn’t know what it means yet, but he’s certain there’s a pattern.” “What kind of pattern?” “Dark spirits and demons are growing stronger.” I bet Nolan could have helped figure out the pattern. I can only imagine how different all of this would be if he had been here with me since the beginning, performing research for Aidan, trying just as hard as Aidan to find answers. Maybe he would have even found some. “Can you sense the demon?” he asks. I nod. Lucio stops dead in his tracks. Despite the flames growing ever higher around us, Lucio and I feel a cool breeze coming from down the road. Lucio starts walking in the direction of the chill, and I follow, placing my feet in the dusty footprints his steps leave behind. Even though he’s not much taller than I am, his feet are bigger than mine, and I feel like a little kid every time I place one of my sneakers in the spot where his dust-covered boot was seconds before. Lucio’s wearing shorts, and instead of looking at where we’re going, I’m watching the muscles in his calves flex and release with each step. He certainly looks strong enough to confront a demon. When he stops, I practically crash into him. “In there,” Lucio whispers, nodding in the direction of a squat stucco building on our left. It’s so small that it can’t possibly have more than one room. An icy breeze blows its splintered wooden door open, bringing a wall of smoke along with it, despite the fact that it’s the only building in sight that isn’t actually on fire. The door bangs against the tiny building with a loud crash as goose bumps rise on my sweaty skin. “Why did the demon choose this town?” I ask. “These people are completely helpless.” “Exactly,” Lucio says. “The same way we gather strength from helping spirits move on, a demon gathers strength from destroying spirits.” Despite the breeze coming from the darkness just a few steps away, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so hot. Somewhere inside

So who else?” “Who else what?” With his mouth full, he says, “Who else got letters?” “Um, that’s really private.” I shake my head at him, like Wow, how rude. “What? I’m just curious.” Peter dips another fry into my little ramekin of ketchup. Smirking, he says, “Come on, don’t be shy. You can tell me. I know I’m number one, obviously. But I want to hear who else made the cut.” He’s practically flexing, he’s so sure of himself. Fine, if he wants to know so bad, I’ll tell him. “Josh, you--” “Obviously.” “Kenny.” Peter snorts. “Kenny? Who’s he?” I prop my elbows up on the table and rest my chin on my hands. “A boy I met at church camp. He was the best swimmer of the whole boys’ side. He saved a drowning kid once. He swam out to the middle of the lake before the lifeguards even noticed anything was wrong.” “So what’d he say when he got the letter?” “Nothing. It was sent back return to sender.” “Okay, who’s next?” I take a bite of sandwich. “Lucas Krapf.” “He’s gay,” Peter says. “He’s not gay!” “Dude, quit dreaming. The kid is gay. He wore an ascot to school yesterday.” “I’m sure he was wearing it ironically. Besides, wearing an ascot doesn’t make someone gay.” I give him a look like Wow, so homophobic. “Hey, don’t give me that look,” he objects. “My favorite uncle’s gay as hell. I bet you fifty bucks that if I showed my uncle Eddie a picture of Lucas, he’d confirm it in half a second.” “Just because Lucas appreciates fashion, that doesn’t make him gay.” Peter opens his mouth to argue but I lift up a hand to quiet him. “All it means is he’s more of a city guy in the midst of all this…this boring suburbia. I bet you he ends up going to NYU or some other place in New York. He could be a TV actor. He’s got that look, you know. Svelte with fine-boned features. Very sensitive features. He looks like…like an angel.” “So what did Angel Boy say about the letter, then?” “Nothing…I’m sure because he’s a gentleman and didn’t want to embarrass me by bringing it up.” I give him a meaningful look. Unlike some people is what I’m saying with my eyes. Peter rolls his eyes. “All right, all right. Whatever, I don’t care.

I was a country kid who went to a public school, and she was more of a middle-class girl who attended a private school. I was into hunting and fishing, and she liked drama and singing in the choir at school and church. Our lives up until that point were totally different. But Missy and I had a very deep spiritual connection, and I thought our mutual love for the Lord might be our biggest strength in sustaining our relationship. Even though Missy was so different from me, I found her world to be very interesting. Looking back, perhaps another reason I decided to give our relationship a chance was because of my aunt Jan’s bizarre premonition about Missy years earlier. My dad’s sister Jan had helped bring him to the Lord, and she taught the fourth grade at OCS. One of her students was Missy, and they went to church together at White’s Ferry Road Church. When I was a kid we attended a small church in the country, but occasionally we visited White’s Ferry with my aunt Jan and her husband. One Sunday, Missy walked by us as we were waiting in the pew. “Let me tell you something,” Jan told me as she pointed at me and then Missy. “That’s the girl you’re going to marry.” Missy was nine years old. To say that was one of the dumbest things I’d ever heard would be an understatement. I love my aunt Jan, but she has a lot in common with her brother Si. They talk a lot, are very animated, and even seem crazy at times. However, they love the Lord and have great hearts. I actually never thought about it again until she reminded me of that day once Missy and I started getting serious. Freaky? A bit. Bizarre? Definitely! Was she right? Absolutely, good call! Missy still isn’t sure what my aunt Jan saw in her. Missy: What did Jan see in me at nine years old? Well, you’ll have to ask her about that. She was the only teacher in my academic history from whom I ever received a smack. She announced a rule to the class one day that no one could touch anyone else’s possessions at any time (due to a recent rash of kids messing with other people’s stuff). The next day, I moved some papers around on one of my classmates’ desks before school, and he tattled on me. Because of her newly pronounced rule, she took me to the girls’ bathroom and gave me a whack on the rear. At the time, I certainly would have never thought she had picked me out to marry her nephew!

I didn’t think we were being quiet, particularly. High heels may have looked dainty, but they didn’t sound that way on a tile floor. Maybe it was just that my dad was so absorbed in the convo on his cell phone. For whatever reason, when we emerged from the kitchen into the den, he started, and he stuffed the phone down by his side in the cushions. I was sorry I’d startled him, but it really was comical to see this big blond manly man jump three feet off the sofa when he saw two teenage girls. I mean, it would have been funny if it weren’t so sad. Dad was a ferocious lawyer in court. Out of court, he was one of those Big Man on Campus types who shook hands with everybody from the mayor to the alleged ax murderer. A lot like Sean, actually. There were only two things Dad was afraid of. First, he wigged out when anything in the house was misplaced. I won’t even go into all the arguments we’d had about my room being a mess. They’d ended when I told him it was my room, and if he didn’t stop bugging me about it, I would put kitchen utensils in the wrong drawers, maybe even hide some (cue horror movie music). No spoons for you! Second, he was easily startled, and very pissed off afterward. “Damn it, Lori!” he hollered. “It’s great to see you too, loving father. Lo, I have brought my friend Tammy to witness out domestic bliss. She’s on the tennis team with me.” Actually, I was on the tennis team with her. “Hello, Tammy. It’s nice to meet you,” Dad said without getting up or shaking her hand or anything else he would normally do. While the two of them recited a few more snippets of polite nonsense, I watched my dad. From the angle of his body, I could tell he was protecting that cell phone behind the cushions. I nodded toward the hiding place. “Hot date?” I was totally kidding. I didn’t expect him to say, “When?” So I said, “Ever.” And then I realized I’d brought up a subject that I didn’t want to bring up, especially not while I was busy being self-absorbed. I clapped my hands. “Okay, then! Tammy and I are going upstairs very loudly, and after a few minutes we will come back down, ringing a cowbell. Please continue with your top secret phone convo.” I turned and headed for the stairs. Tammy followed me. I thought Dad might order me back, send Tammy out, and give me one of those lectures about my attitude (who, me?). But obviously he was chatting with Pamela Anderson and couldn’t wait for me to leave the room. Behind us, I heard him say, “I’m so sorry. I’m still here. Lori came in. Oh, yeah? I’d like to see you try.” “He seems jumpy,” Tammy whispered on the stairs. “Always,” I said. “Do you have a lot of explosions around your house?” I glanced at my watch. “Not this early.

Hey,” he said, his hand gently rubbing my back. I heard the diesel rattle of vehicles driving away from the scene. “Hey,” I replied, sitting up and looking at my watch. It was 5:00 A.M. “Are you okay?” “Yep,” he said. “We finally got it out.” Marlboro Man’s clothes were black. Heavy soot covered his drawn, exhausted face. “Can I go home now?” I said. I was only halfway kidding. And actually, I wasn’t kidding at all. “Sorry about that,” Marlboro Man said, still rubbing my back. “That was crazy.” He gave a half-chuckle and kissed my forehead. I didn’t know what to say. Driving back to his house, the pickup was quiet. My mind began to race, which is never good at five in the morning. And then, inexplicably, just as we reached the road to his house, I lost it. “So, why did you even take me there, anyway?” I said. “I mean, if I’m just going to ride in someone’s pickup, why even bring me along? It’s not like I was any help to anyone…” Marlboro Man glanced over at me. His eyes were tired. “So…did you want to operate one of the sprayers?” he asked, an unfamiliar edge to his voice. “No, I just…I mean…” I searched for the words. “I mean, that was just ridiculous! That was dangerous!” “Well, prairie fires are dangerous,” Marlboro Man answered. “But that’s life. Stuff like this happens.” I was cranky. The nap had done little to calm me down. “What happens? You just drive right into fires and throw caution to the wind? I mean, people could die out there. I could have died. You could have died! I mean, do you realize how crazy that was?” Marlboro Man looked straight ahead, rubbing his left eye and blinking. He looked exhausted. He looked spent. We arrived in his driveway just in time to see the eastern sun peeking over the horse barn. Marlboro Man stopped his pickup, put it into park, and said, still looking straight ahead, “I took you with me…because I thought you’d like to see a fire.” He turned off the pickup and opened his door. “And because I didn’t want to leave you here by yourself.” I didn’t say anything. We both exited the pickup, and Marlboro Man began walking toward his house. And then, still walking, he said it--words that chilled me to the bone. “I’ll see you later.” He didn’t even turn around. I stood there, not knowing what to say, though deep down I knew I wouldn’t have to. I knew that just as he’d always done anytime I’d ever been rendered speechless in his presence, he’d speak up, turn around, come to my rescue, hold me in his arms…and infuse love into my soul, as only he could do. He always swooped in to save me, and this time would be no different. But he didn’t turn around. He didn’t speak up. He simply walked toward the house, toward the door on his back porch--the same porch door where, hours earlier, he and I had stood in a complete fit of romance and lust, where the heat between us was but a foreshadowing of the fire waiting for us in that distant prairie.

I just care about you so much … but I’ve always got this fear that … one day you’ll leave. Or Pip and Jason will leave, or … I don’t know.’ Fresh tears fell from my cheeks. ‘I’m never going to fall in love, so … my friendships are all I have, so … I just … can’t bear the idea of losing any of my friends. Because I’m never going to have that one special person.’ ‘Can you let me be that person?’ Rooney said quietly. I sniffed loudly. ‘What d’you mean?’ ‘I mean I want to be your special person.’ [...] ‘But you know what I realised on my walk?’ she said. ‘I realise that I love you, Georgia.’ My mouth dropped open. ‘Obviously I’m not romantically in love with you. But I realised that whatever these feelings are for you, I …’ She grinned wildly. ‘I feel like I am in love. Me and you – this is a fucking love story! I feel like I’ve found something most people just don’t get. I feel at home around you in a way I have never felt in my fucking life. And maybe most people would look at us and think that we’re just friends, or whatever, but I know that it’s just … so much MORE than that.’ She gestured dramatically at me with both hands. ‘You changed me. You … you fucking saved me, I swear to God. I know I still do a lot of dumb stuff and I say the wrong things and I still have days where I just feel like shit but … I’ve felt happier over the past few weeks than I have in years.’ I couldn’t speak. I was frozen. Rooney dropped to her knees. ‘Georgia, I am never going to stop being your friend. And I don’t mean that in the boring average meaning of ‘friend’ where we stop talking regularly when we’re twenty-five because we’ve both met nice young men and gone off to have babies, and only get to meet up twice a year. I mean I’m going to pester you to buy a house next door to me when we’re forty-five and have finally saved up enough for our deposits. I mean I’m going to be crashing round yours every night for dinner because you know I can’t fucking cook to save my life, and if I’ve got kids and a spouse, they’ll probably come round with me, because otherwise they’ll be living on chicken nuggets and chips. I mean I’m going to be the one bringing you soup when you text me that you’re sick and can’t get out of bed and ferrying you to the doctor’s even when you don’t want to go because you feel guilty about using the NHS when you just have a stomach bug. I mean we’re gonna knock down the fence between our gardens so we have one big garden, and we can both get a dog and take turns looking after it. I mean I’m going to be here, annoying you, until we’re old ladies, sitting in the same care home, talking about putting on a Shakespeare because we’re all old and bored as shit.’ She grabbed the bunch of flowers and practically threw them at me. ‘And I bought these for you because I honestly didn’t know how else to express any of that to you.’ I was crying. I just started crying again. Rooney wiped the tears off my cheeks.

flicker?" He points to the screen and pauses the vid. "That's when they switched the footage." I stare at the screen. "How do I know you're not the ones lying?" "You saw it yourself on the street," Meyer says. I glance up from the pad and lock eyes with Meyer. "What else are they lying about?" Jayson chuckles. "Well… that's going to take longer than we have." "Here's one," Meyer says. "Remember that last viral outbreak that killed a bunch of Level Ones?" "3005B?" My heart races. That's the virus that ultimately killed Ben thirteen years ago. "That's it. The one they use in all the broadcasts to remind citizens how important it is to get your MedVac updates? It wasn't an accident." We were always told a virus swept through Level One because they hadn't gotten their updated VacTech yet. Hundreds of people died in the day it took to get everyone up to date. "My brother died because of that." Everything I've found out over the last week suddenly grips me with fear. This can't be real. My breath shortens, and suddenly my head starts slowly spinning. Everything goes blurry. Then black. ~~~ "It's all right, kid," a distant voice, which must be Jayson's, echoes in the back of my mind. The room swirls around me. Their faces blur in and out of focus. "Meyer, get her." Blinking a couple of times, I try to sit up. I guess I fell. Meyer's warm hands rest on the back of my neck, my head in his lap. "Don't stand. You could pass out again," he says. He helps me sit up. "Are you okay?" "No, I'm not okay," I mumble. "This is too much." I feel like I should be crying, but I'm not. The reality is that the anger I feel is so much greater than any sadness. Neither Meyer nor Jayson speak, and let me mull over what I've just heard. "Why did they do that?" I eventually ask. "Two reasons, kid," Jayson says. "To cull the Level Ones, and to scare Elore into taking the VacTech. If viral outbreaks are still a threat, no one questions it, and continues believing inside the perimeter is the safest place for them." "I'm sorry about your brother," Meyer says as he stands, offering me his hand. His words are genuine, filled with the emotions of someone who has also experienced loss. "I hate to end this," Jayson interrupts, "but it's time to go." Meyer eyes Jayson, and then me. "I understand if you're not ready, but you need to choose soon. Within the next few days." I take his hand and pull myself to my feet. Words catch somewhere between my heart and throat. The old me wants to tell them to get lost and to never bother me again. It's so risky. Then again, I can't stand by while Manning and Direction kill people to keep us in the dark. Joining is the right thing to do. Feelings I've never experienced before well inside my chest, and I long to shout, When do we start? Instead, I stuff them down and stare at the ground. Subtle pressure squeezes my hand, bringing me back to the present. I never let go of Meyer's hand. How long have we been like that? He releases my hand as he mutters and steps back. The heat from his touch still flickers on my skin. You didn't have to go. I clear my throat and turn toward Meyer. Our eyes lock. "I've already decided," I tell him. "I'll do it. For Ben. Direction caused his death, and there's no way I'm standing by and letting them do this to more people." I barely recognize my own voice as I ask, "What do I do?" A slap hits my back and I choke. Jayson. "Atta girl. Meyer and I knew you had it in you." "Jayson, you have to give Avlyn some time." Meyer steps toward me and holds his handheld in the air toward Jayson. "I'll bring her up to speed." "Sure thing." Jayson throws his hands in the air and walks to the other side of the room. "Sorry," Meyer murmurs. "Jayson is pretty… overwhelming. At least until you know him. Even then…" "Oh, it's fine." A white lie. "He's a nice guy. Now, why don't you tell me the instructions

I got a note from a reader, Gina, a little while ago. She wrote, “On a personal note—In 2016, your book The Dip helped me realize I was only trying to create a business so I could have the time to be a writer. I cut out the middleman and went all in on writing. Within two years I was able to become a freelance writer and researcher/fact-checker for kids and adults, full-time.” The lesson here is simple: By bringing her focus back to the purpose of the work, Gina was able to get back to work. To the work she wanted to do all along. We do our best work with intention.

Sharing difficult truths might come with a cost-the need to face them- but there is also a reward: freedom. The truth releases us form shame." "There is a term we use in therapy: Forced forgiveness. Sometimes people feel that in order to get past trauma, they need to forgive whoever caused the damage. But too often people feel pressured to forgive and then end up believing that something is wrong with them if they cant quite get there. You can have compassion without forgiving. there are many ways to move on, and pretending to feel a certain way isn’t one." "I point out to her that pain can be protective; staying in a depressed place can be a form of avoidance. Safe inside her shell of pain, she doesn’t have to face anything, nor does she has to emerge into the world, where she may get hurt again." "What brings you here now? The now is key, why this year, this month, this day, have you decided to come talk to me?" "Just as parents raise their kids to loose them one day, therapists work to loose clients, not retain them." "The inability to say no is largely about approval seeking- people imagine that if they say no, they wont be loved by others. The inability to say yes however, is more about lack of trust in one self." "You cant get through your pain by diminishing it, you get through your pain by accepting it and figuring out what to do with it." "We grow in connection with others. It turns out the books grow in the same way." "Its all you" we tend to say, "I was just here to guide you" And in a sense, that’s true. The fact that they picked up the phone and decided to come to therapy and then work through things every week is something no one else could do for them" "Its like when someone finally has the guts to tell you that you have a problem, and you feel both defensive and relieved that this person is telling it like it is. That’s the delicate work therapists do.

Prøv lige at overveje den her formulering: So many nights, exhausted or just impatient, I have been eager for my children’s bedtime. One kid’s chatter barely registers in my ear because it’s the same chatter I’ve been hearing all day. The other kid’s chain of requests for a sip of water, to be tucked in (again), for another sip of water, to turn the hallway light on, feels like fingernails on a chalkboard. Minutes later, as I peak into their room and see that they have each fallen into slumber, I see all sweetness and splendor in their faces. I want to lie down and hold them close. I wonder what that last bit of chatter was that I tuned out. Whether it was something important about my child’s world. A tiny voice echoes in my head, “can I please have another sip of water?” And I hear it more clearly now as “It makes me feel secure and cared for when you bring it to me.” Their care and wellbeing matter more to me than anything and I feel at a cellular level the honor and joy of being their mom. Now that they’re asleep.

So many nights, exhausted or just impatient, I have been eager for my children’s bedtime. One kid’s chatter barely registers in my ear because it’s the same chatter I’ve been hearing all day. The other kid’s chain of requests for a sip of water, to be tucked in (again), for another sip of water, to turn the hallway light on, feels like fingernails on a chalkboard. Minutes later, as I peak into their room and see that they have each fallen into slumber, I see all sweetness and splendor in their faces. I want to lie down and hold them close. I wonder what that last bit of chatter was that I tuned out. Whether it was something important about my child’s world. A tiny voice echoes in my head, “can I please have another sip of water?” And I hear it more clearly now as “It makes me feel secure and cared for when you bring it to me.” Their care and wellbeing matter more to me than anything and I feel at a cellular level the honor and joy of being their mom. Now that they’re asleep.

What to Do Tonight Spend private time with your child, ideally without electronics. Take turns with each child if you have more than one, so that the ratio is one-on-one. It is remarkably healing for kids and will help you to enjoy them. It also makes them feel like they are your number one priority. If you’re highly anxious, do something about it. Treating anxiety is one of the best things you can do for yourself and your family. Consider participating in cognitive behavioral therapy: you can learn very effective strategies for identifying and “talking back to” the distorted and unproductive thoughts that contribute to high anxiety. Learn to meditate. Take a yoga class. Be very regular in your exercise routine. Spend time in nature. Get more sleep. Socialize more with friends if it helps you feel calm. Avoid making decisions for your child based on fear. If you find yourself thinking, “I’m afraid if I don’t do this now, then—” stop. Do what you feel is right now, not what you feel you have to because of what you’re afraid will happen if you don’t. If your child is struggling, schedule a short time every day for you to worry about his or her problems. Literally write it into your planner. This will let your brain know that it is safe not to worry all day long. Remember who’s responsible for what. It cannot be your responsibility to see that everything goes well for your children at all times. If you are very worried about your teenager and have talked through the issues together many times, write your child a short letter summarizing your concerns and offering any help the child might need. Then promise that you will not bring the issue up again for a month. When you break your promise (because you will) apologize and recommit to it. Get out a piece of paper and draw a vertical line in the middle. In the left-hand column, write statements such as the following: “It’s okay for Jeremy to have a learning disability,” “It’s okay that Sarah doesn’t have any friends right now,” “It’s okay for Ben to be depressed right now.” In the right-hand column, write down the automatic thoughts that come to your mind in response (likely rebuttal) to these statements. Then question these automatic thoughts. Ask questions such as, “Can I be absolutely sure that this thought is true?” “Who would I be if I didn’t believe this?” This kind of self-questioning exercise, developed by author and speaker Byron Katie and others, can serve as a useful tool for discovering the thoughts that trap you into negative judgments.18 Create a stress-reduction plan for yourself. Can you get more exercise? More sleep? What calms you down and how can you do more of it? Don’t make yourself available to your kids at the expense of your own well-being. Wall off some “me” time. Model self-acceptance and tell your kids what you’re doing.

*JESUS IN LONDON 'INASMUCH AS YE DID IT NOT—' If JESUS came to London, Came to London to-day, He would not go to the West End, He would come down our way; He'd talk with the children dancing To the organ out in the street, And say He was their big Brother And give them something to eat. He wouldn't go to the mansions Where the charitable live, He'd come to the tenement houses Where we ain't got nothing to give. He'd come so kind and so homely, And feed us with love and bread, And then He'd tell us how to behave, And then we'd mind what He said. In the warm, bright, West End churches They sing and preach and pray, They call us “Beloved brethren,” But they do not act that way; And when He come to the church door He'd call out loud and free, “You stop that preaching and praying And show what you've done for Me.” Then they'd say, “Oh, Lord, we have given To the poor both blankets and tracts, And we've tried to make them sober And we've tried to teach them facts. But they will sneak round to the drink shop And pawn the blankets for beer, And we find them very ungrateful— But still we persevere.” Then He would say, “I told you The time I was here before, That you were all of you brothers, All you that I suffered for. I won't go into your churches, I'll stop in the sun outside. You bring out the men, your brothers, The men for whom I died!” Out of our lousy lodgings, From arches and doorways about, They'd have to do as He told them, They'd have to call us out. Millions and millions and millions, Thick and crawling like flies, We should creep out to the sunshine And not be afraid of His eyes. He'd see what God's image looks like When men have dealt with the same— Wrinkled with work that is never done, Swollen and dirty with shame. He'd see on the children's foreheads The branded gutter-sign That marks the girls to be harlots, That dooms the boys to be swine. Then He'd say, “What's the good of churches When these have nowhere to sleep? And how can I hear you praying When they are cursing so deep? I gave My blood and My body That they might have bread and wine, And you have taken your share and theirs Of these good gifts of Mine!” Then some of the rich would be sorry, And all would be very scared; And they'd say, “But we never knew, Lord!” And He'd say, “You never cared!” And some would be sick and shameful Because they'd know that they knew, And the best would say, “We were wrong, Lord. Now tell us what to do!” I think He'd be sitting, likely, For someone 'ud bring Him a chair, With a common kid cuddled up on His knee And the common sun on His hair. And they'd be standing before Him, And He'd say, “You know that you knew. Why haven't you worked for your brothers The same as I worked for you? “For since you're all of you brothers, It's clear as God's blessed sun That each must work for the others, Not thousands work for one. And the ones that have lived bone-idle, If they want Me to hear them pray, Let them go and work for their livings— The only honest way! “I've got nothing new to tell you; You know what I always said. But you've built their bones into churches And stolen their wine and bread. You with My name on your foreheads, Liar, and traitor, and knave, You have lived by the death of your brothers, These whom I died to save.” I wish He would come and say it; Perhaps they'd believe it then, And work like men for their livings And let us work like men. Brothers? They don't believe it, The lie on their lips is red. They'll never believe till He comes again Or till we rise from the dead

You’re not going to have kids?” Carson asks. “I would have thought you needed someone to carry on the famous Orson Ass.” I pause, my mind reeling. Holy. Fuck. “Hell, I didn’t even think about that.” I grip my forehead in distress. “Great, look what you just did,” Knox says while I pick up my phone to text Dottie. “Don’t text Dottie, Carson was just being a dick.” “No, this is not something we considered. We need to talk about this, right away.” I excuse myself from the table and weave my way through the restaurant until I find a quiet corner near the bathrooms. I dial “Bae’s” phone number and wait impatiently for her to answer. “Hey, aren’t you are at brunch with the boys?” she asks when she answers. “Dottie, we didn’t talk about something really important and now I’m freaking the fuck out.” “What did we not talk about?” she calmly asks. “You know that conversation we had awhile back about not having any kids?” “Yesss,” she drags out. I glance around to make sure no one is listening to me, stuff my hand in my pocket and quietly ask, “What about my butt?” Silence. Then . . . “Uh, what about your butt?” “You know . . .” “I really don’t know and I have a meeting in ten minutes, so if you can speed this up, I’d appreciate it.” “Dottie, if we don’t have kids, my butt dies with me.” “Your butt is dying with you either way, unless you have some sort of insane idea that I get your butt molded in gold or something, which although I wouldn’t put that past you, it’s not happening. Is that what you mean? You want to mold your butt and give it to our kids? You know I’m all about weird gifts but that’s just not something you should give your offspring.” “I’m not talking about that, but thanks for the idea, writing that in my will.” I hear her exaggerated breath. “I’m saying if we don’t have kids, I won’t pass my butt genes on to anyone and is that really fair to the human race? To stop my butt here?” “You’re serious?” “Dead serious. The butt can’t end with me. And what about my potato salad recipe? No one will say hey, you know what, I have my grandpa’s potato salad recipe I can make to bring to the barbeque. And that’s sacrilege.

Have you played tennis on that tennis court?’ I asked. ‘Oh, don’t talk to me about tennis,’ he complained, ‘my kids have been dying to have a game ever since we got here, but they can’t’ ‘Why not?’ ‘There aren’t any tennis balls on the island.’ ‘You’re joking.’ ‘I’m not. Not one. The shop’s run out and the guy who was supposed to bring some out from the mainland forgot’ Island life encapsulated.

since the accident. I don’t know what her problem was. After all, I was a “hero.” At least the newspaper said so. “Hey, Alex,” she said, twirling her ponytail with her pencil. “Oh, hi,” I stammered, looking down at my burger. “You guys sounded really great in the talent show. I didn’t know you could sing like that.” “Uhh, thanks. It must be all the practice I get with my karaoke machine.” Oh God, did I just tell her I sing karaoke? Definitely not playing it cool, I thought to myself. TJ butted in, “Yeah, Small Fry was ok, but I really carried the show with my awesome guitar solo.” He smiled proudly. “Shut up, TJ,” I said, tossing a fry at him, which hit him between the eyes. “Hey, watch it, Baker. Just because you’re a ‘hero’ doesn’t mean I won’t pummel you.” “Yeah, right,” I said, smiling. Emily laughed. “Maybe we could come over during Christmas break and check out your karaoke machine. Right, Danielle?” Danielle rolled her eyes and sighed. “Yeah, whatever.” I gulped. “Uhhh…yeah…that sounds great.” “Ok, give me your hand,” she said. “My hand,” I asked, surprised. “Yep,” she said, grabbing my wrist and opening my palm. “Here’s my number,” she said, writing the numbers 585-2281 in gold glitter pen on my palm.” I will never wash my hand again, I thought to myself. “Text me over break, ok?” she said, smiling brightly. “Yeah, sure,” I nodded, as she walked away giggling with Danielle. “Merry Christmas to me!” I whispered to TJ and Simon. “Yeah, there’s just one problem, Dufus,” TJ said. “Oh yeah, what’s that, TJ? That she didn’t give you her number?” I asked. “No, Dork. How are you going to text her if you don’t have a cell phone?” He smiled. “Oh, right,” I said, slumping down in my seat. “That could be a problem.” “You could just call her on your home phone,” Simon suggested, wiping his nose with a napkin. “Yeah, sure,” TJ chuckled. “Hi Emily, this is Alex Baker calling from the year 1984.” He held his pencil to his ear like a phone.  “Would you like to come over to play Atari? Then maybe we can solve my Rubik’s Cube while we break dance ….and listen to New Kids on the Block.” He was cracking himself up and turning bright red. “Maybe I’ll type you a love letter on my typewriter. It’s so much cooler than texting.” “Shut up, TJ,” I said, smiling. “I’m starting to remember why I didn’t like you much at the beginning of the year.” “Lighten up, Baker. I’m just bustin’ your chops. Christmas is coming. Maybe Santa will feel sorry for your dorky butt and bring you a cell phone.” Chapter 2 ePhone Denied When I got home from school that day, it was the perfect time to launch my cell phone campaign. Mom was in full Christmas mode. The house smelled like gingerbread. She had put up the tree and there were boxes of ornaments and decorations on the floor. I stepped over a wreath and walked into the kitchen. She was baking sugar cookies and dancing around the kitchen to Jingle Bell Rock with my little brother Dylan. My mom twirled Dylan around and smiled. She was wearing the Grinch apron that we had given her last Christmas. Dylan was wearing a Santa hat, a fake beard, and of course- his Batman cape. Batman Claus. “Hey Honey. How was school?” she asked, giving Dylan one more spin. “It was pretty good. We won second place in the talent show.” I held up the candy cane shaped award that Ms. Riley had given us. “Great job! You and TJ deserved it. You practiced hard and it payed off.” “Yeah, I guess so,” I said, grabbing a snicker-doodle off the counter. “And now it’s Christmas break! I bet your excited.” She took a tray of cookies out of the oven and placed

He glanced away. His jaw ticced twice. “That isn’t something I’ve done.” I gasped. “You’re kidding. Why haven’t you?” “I’m not a whore about kissing, but I suppose I am about that. I’ve never been inclined to French kiss a pussy.” “Too personal?” “Yes. The idea of getting down on my belly with my face between a girl’s thighs has never appealed to me. Maybe it’s because I was with the wrong girls.” His nod was sharp and slight. “I will on you, though. You can teach me exactly how you like it.” “Why on me?” He lifted a shoulder. “Because I know you’re not going to fall in love with me when I eat your pussy so good you don’t remember you have legs, much less how to use them.” My thighs instantly clamped together. “Big words for someone who didn’t come close to getting me off the first time.” “I wasn’t dedicated to the job then. Now, it’s about pride, Delilah.” He canted his head. “Besides, don’t you think it’s your responsibility as a woman to send me out into the world well trained?” “I would roll my eyes, but I would most likely injure myself from doing it too hard.” He took my hand in his, bringing it to his mouth. “I’m committed to this endeavor. I won’t ask to fuck you until I’ve mastered the art of making you come. You’ll be my teacher, and I’ll be your attentive student.” I shook my head. “I’m busy.” “You aren’t too busy for me to lick your pussy.” “You’re ridiculous.

Look,” she said, holding up his bowl. “You finished all of it.” This boy, who was standing in the corner, voluntarily and unhappily, when I first saw him; who wouldn’t interact with the other kids, who frowned chronically, who wouldn’t respond to me when I tickled and prodded him, trying to get him to play—this boy broke immediately into a wide, radiant smile. It brought joy to everyone at the table. Twenty years later, writing it down today, it still brings me to tears. Afterward, he followed my wife around like a puppy for the rest of the day, refusing to let her out of his sight. When she sat down, he jumped in her lap, cuddling in, opening himself back up to the world, searching desperately for the love he had been continually denied. Later in the day, but far too soon, his mother reappeared. She came down the stairs into the room we all occupied. “Oh, SuperMom,” she uttered, resentfully, seeing her son curled up in my wife’s lap. Then she departed, black, murderous heart unchanged, doomed child in hand. She was a psychologist. The things you can see, with even a single open eye. It’s no wonder that people want to stay blind.

All right," Nick interrupted, dropping a hand to his wife's shoulder and pulling her to his side. "I'm calling this meeting of the sad and broody kids club to an end for the night. Y'all can wait until next week to dip into the existentialism and the nihilism, okay? Thank you." He shook his head at me. "I don't know why I bring you home with me sometimes, Stremmel, but you have the dying star story now. Everything's going to work out." "Is that what happens after she tells the star story?" I asked.

Stop being so athletic,” Ethan mumbled. “And responsible. Why can’t I date someone who’s like me?” “Because you’d end up in rehab,” Riley said. He laughed when Ethan threw a couch pillow at him. “I’ll blow you if you bring me back McDonalds,” Ethan yelled as Riley closed the apartment door on his way out to go running. Their neighbor across the way, a very old man wearing a wide-brimmed hat, raised his bushy eyebrows at Riley. “Kid must really need a cheeseburger,” he said without inflection.

As I leave the DA's office building, the cold wind bring me wide awake. I trot down the steps through the shouting reporters without a word, turning left toward City Hall, which abuts the southeast face of the courthouse Just as I think I've cleared the feeding frenzy, someone catches hold of my arm. I whirl in anger, then find myself facing an elderly black woman huddling in a jacket. 'Yes, ma'am?' I say. 'How can I help you?' "Isobel Handley,' she says with a smile. 'I want to know when you're going to do something about the schools, Mayor. You got elected saying you were gonna fix 'em, but right now it's a crying shame how few children who go into the first grade make it through the twelfth for graduation. And you've been in office two whole years!' The reasons for this state of affairs are both simple and unimaginably complex, and I certainly don't have the resources to go through them on a cold sidewalk. Not today, anyway. But conversations like this one are the daily fare of a mayor. 'I'm talking about the PUBLIC schools,' the woman goes an. "Not the private white schools where the only black kids are football players.' 'Yes, ma'am," I say hopelessly. 'I'm working as hard as I can on the issue, I promise you.' 'If your little girl wasn't in a private school, you'd work harder.' 'Mrs. Handley, I-' 'You don't have to explain, baby, I understand. But you take a stick to them selectmen and supervisors, if you have to. That's what they need. Sometimes I think the schools were better before integration. At least we learned the fundamentals, and we graduated knowing how to read.' There's no point trying to explain that I have no authority over the county supervisors or the state board of education. 'Sometimes I wish I could do exactly what you suggested, Mrs. Handley. Now, you'd better get out of this cold. And Merry Christmas to you.' At last she smiles. 'You too, Mayor. God bless. And don't pay these reporters no mind.

True. I was there, given it was at my house. I kept Bex company because it was her birthday and she looked so lonely.” The kid’s head fell back, hands yanking at his hair. “What the fuck, Bex? It was your birthday? You didn’t even tell me.” She covered her face with her hand. “I know. I should have, but with everything...god, I don’t know why I didn’t tell you, but I didn’t tell Asher either. He found out inadvertently.” “All true.” I slipped my phone from my pocket, running my thumb along the screen, bringing it to life. Approaching Elijah, I turned the screen toward him. “I took some special birthday pics of your girl. You might like them.” Bex yelped my name, rushing to see my screen too. I moved, blocking her view, but Elijah got an eyeful. He was riveted to the image of his girlfriend sleeping naked in my bed. I’d never intended on showing this to anyone, not really. But my dad always told me to never ignore an opportunity when it came knocking.

There’s a charge to being around Duncan, like one of those light bulbs you touch in the science museum that make your hair stand up, and we hadn’t stopped talking—urgently—since I arrived. We bounced from topic to topic, frantically, like fast friends excited to find someone else who also wanted to talk about religion, mysticism, sex, ghosts, and drugs. We sat down next to the incense like two kids in a dorm room trying to mask illegal aromas, and Duncan hit Record. I told him I wasn’t used to things getting so deep and so interesting so quickly. “That’s what happens when you’re with cool people,” Duncan said. “You end up getting in great conversations.” I wondered in this moment if Duncan knew how unique he was. I wondered if he knew how bored and dismissive people can be when you try to talk about dreams, or out-of-body experiences, or the afterlife, or if you suggest that the physical world is only just a small piece of what’s really going on here. “The plague of the world is that so many people allow themselves to be surrounded by vampires,” Duncan said, using the classiest monster as a word to describe all the what-you-see-is-what-you-get people, the ones who are busy cockblocking the curious weirdos from tripping out on their basic wonder. “Their whole life is one shit conversation to the next to the next to the next until they’re on their deathbed, and that’s the one real conversation they have. They finally say, ‘I love you so much!’ And then they die.” This is Duncan, the opposite of a vampire. He doesn’t drain life from people, he infuses them, resuscitating their awe and bringing color back to their cheeks. The vampires, he warned, “will keep you stuck in the harbor of sorrows. They’ll try to keep your fucking anchor down.” I cackled with laughter. Duncan is one of those rare people who remind you that we’re all here, stuck in our human bodies, confused and curious since we all emerged from the interdimensional space portal commonly known as a vagina. He wants to get into it; he wants to touch, taste, scream, laugh, and sing his way toward enlightenment, and as I sat with him that day, he made me think he just might bring me along with him.

standing on end. “We’re twenty minutes out from Athebyne, so hydrate! We have no idea what kind of scenario is waiting for us,” Xaden calls out, his voice carrying over the squad. “You doing all right?” Liam asks, coming my way as Tairn and Andarna both take the few steps they need to access the water. “Stay with Tairn,” I tell Andarna. She’s a shiny target this far from the protection of the Vale. “I will.” Gods, I should have left her at Basgiath. What the hell was I thinking, bringing her out here? She’s just a kid, and this flight has been grueling. “It was never your choice,” Tairn lectures. “Humans, even bonded ones, do not decide where dragons fly. Even one as young as Andarna knows her own mind.” His words bring little comfort. When push comes to shove, I’m responsible for her safety. “Violet?” Concern furrows Liam’s brow. “If I say I’m not sure, will you think less of me?” There are so many ways to answer that question. Physically, I’m sore but fine, but mentally… Well, I’m a mess of anxiety and anticipation for what the War Games will bring. We were warned the quadrant always loses ten percent of the graduating class in the final test, but it’s more than that. I just can’t put my finger on it. “I’d think you’re being honest.” I glance to the left and see Xaden deep in conversation with Garrick. Naturally, the section leader made the cut for Xaden’s personal squad. Xaden looks my way, our eyes locking for a second, and that’s all it takes to remind my body that I had him naked a few hours ago, the lines of his carved muscles straining against my skin. I’m so damned in love with that man. How am I supposed to keep it off my face? Just be professional. That’s all I have to do. Though the way I’m hyperaware of each and every thing he’s said and done since leaving his bedroom pretty much makes me a walking example of why first-years shouldn’t sleep with their wingleaders, let alone fall in love with them. Good thing he’s only my wingleader

Now, as for me and my house… this gon’ be TMI, but for the sake of the topic, I’m telling you. I’m knockin’ Ash down damn near daily. If she wears them shorts I like and the kids not home, it’s going down. “If she comes to the office to bring me lunch and she got on the pumps she knows I like, I’m knocking her down. After I’ve cleaned the kitchen ‘cause she cooked dinner, and as soon as your niece and nephew are down for the night, I’m trying to see how many orgasms I can give her before I make her tap out. You catch my drift?

brought me in yesterday. I was in there for probably an hour with my dad. I think it wore him out too much, I had to take him back home.” Her attention is split—I can tell she’s thinking about something else while trying to hold on to the conversation. It’s something she used to do when we were kids too. “How is your dad?” I ask. “Still fiery as ever?” That brings her back and she shakes her head. “No, he’s calmed down in the past few years. I think when Jessica never came back it began to take a toll on him. And I wasn’t enough to keep him going.” “Jude, that’s not true,” I say. “Your dad loved you.” She gives me a sardonic smile.

I don’t know how to explain it.” “That’s the beauty of love,” Pete sings. “I’m not in love with her,” I challenge. “Not yet. But there’s a possibility.” “Yeah.” A lot of possibility. I grin. “Doesn’t she have a boyfriend?” Logan asks. I shake my head. “Not anymore. They broke up.” Logan’s eyes narrow, but he doesn’t say anything. “She gave me the impression that he didn’t like the idea of raising biracial kids.” I wince because I don’t even like saying it out loud. “How do you feel about that?” Logan asks. “Kids are kids,” I say. We have been exposed to so many types of people, and with Logan’s disability, we learned early what’s important in life. And now that Pete’s working with disabled kids and kids from the youth detention center, he often brings them home and we’re exposed even more. It doesn’t matter what your outsides look like; it’s your insides that count. “I want them almost as much as I want her,” I admit. “I’d be honored to have a place in their lives. Any place they’ll let me have.” Logan still looks flummoxed. “Stop looking at me like I’ve gone apeshit.” Logan shakes his head. “I’m just surprised,” he admits. “Me, too.

Wriggling out of his grasp she braced herself on his shoulders and tried to stand. Next thing she knew, he had her around the legs and took her down to the mattress in some sort of super-fast ninja move. She screamed and laughed, and he was laughing every bit as hard as he came down on top of her. And, oh God, his laughter was a sweet and sexy rumble that lit her up inside. “You fight dirty, Easy,” she said around her chuckles. “I haven’t had this much fun in so long.” She caressed his face with her fingers. “Me neither. Between overloading on classes and my epilepsy, I often feel like a little old lady trapped in the body of a twenty-year-old. All I need is some cats.” “Cats are awesome,” he said. “When I was a kid, I used to sneak stray cats into the house, just for a night or two. I’d keep them in my room and bring up bowls of milk and cans of tuna for them.” “Aw, you were a sweet little boy, weren’t you?” she asked, loving how he was opening up to her. The closeness, the sharing, the way his big body was lying on her legs and hips, leading him to prop his head up on her lower stomach—both her heart and her body reacted. “Maybe for about five minutes.” He winked. “Mostly, I was a hell-raiser. Growing up, we didn’t live in the best neighborhood. Drug dealers on the corner, gang activity trying to pull in even the younger kids, crack house one block over. All that. Trouble wasn’t hard to find.” He shrugged. “Army straightened me out, though.” “Well, we lived in a nice neighborhood growing up and here my father was the freaking drug dealer on the corner. Or close enough, anyway.” Jenna stared at the ceiling and shook her head. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to get serious.” His thumb stroked along her side, sliding the cotton of her borrowed shirt against her skin in a way that almost tickled. “Don’t apologize. Our histories are what they are, you know?” She nodded and gave him a little smile. “Yeah.” Shifting off her, Easy stretched out alongside her and propped his head up on his arm. “I’m thirty, Jenna,” he said out of nowhere. And he was telling her this because? He thought their age difference was too great? He thought she was too young? He was worried she would think he was too old? Probably D) all of the above. Thing was, all she saw when she looked at Easy was a guy she really freaking liked. One who’d saved her life, helped make her sister safe, and gave her a sense of security she hadn’t felt in years. He was hot as hell, easy to talk to, and one of the kindest guys she’d ever known. Maybe some of that was because he was older. Who knew? “And I need to know this because?” she asked, resting her head on her arm. The muscles of his shoulders lifted into a shrug, but his face was contemplative. “Because there’s clearly something going on between us.” Heat rushed across her body. She held up a hand, and he laced his fingers between hers. “When I look at you, I don’t see a bunch of differences, Easy.” “What do you see then?” Warmth flooded into Jenna’s cheeks, and she chuckled. He’d said that she was beautiful, after all, so why couldn’t she give him a compliment in return? “A really hot guy I’d like to get to know more.” A smug smile slipped onto his face, and she might’ve rolled her eyes if it weren’t so damn sexy. “Really hot, huh?” “Well, kinda hot, anyway.” “Nuh-uh,” he said, tugging her hand to his chest. “Can’t take it back now.” Cheeks burning and big smile threatening, she rolled onto her side to face him. They lay there, side by side, her chest almost touching his, looking at each other. Tension and desire and anticipation crackled in the space between them, making it hard to breathe. “What do you see when you look at me?” she whispered, half-afraid to ask but even more curious to hear what he’d say. Did he mostly see someone who was too young for him? Or a needy girl he had to save and babysit?

Paw, paw, paw. On his shirt. “Fucking hell.” He gave in and rubbed that black belly. “And no, I don’t need anything.” The purring got so loud, he had to lean in to the butler. “What did you say?” “I’m happy to oblige whatever you require.” “Yeah. I know. But I’m going to take care of my brother. No one else. Are we clear.” The cat was now rubbing its head into his pec. Then stretching up into the itching. Oh, God, this was awful—especially as the butler’s already droopy face sagged down to what were no doubt knobby knees. “Ah, shit, Fritz—” “Is he ill?” iAm closed his eyes briefly as the female voice registered. Fantastic. Another party heard from. “He’s fine,” iAm said without looking at the Chosen Selena. Leaving the kibitzers in the dust, he went into the pantry with the freeloading cat and . . . Right. How was he going to get the load of post-migraine recovery rations down from the shelves with his arms full of— What was its name? Fine. It was G*dd*mn Cat, then. Looking down into those wide, contented eyes, iAm thinned his lips as he rubbed under its chin. Behind an ear. “Okay, enough with this.” He played with one of the paws. “I gotta put you down now.” Assuming control, he took the cat out of its recline and went to put it down on the— Somehow the thing managed to claw its way into the very fibers of his fleece and hang off the front of him like a tie. “Are you kidding me.” More purring. A blink of those luminous eyes. An expression of self-possession that iAm took to mean this interaction was going to go the cat’s way—and no one else’s. “Mayhap I shall help?” Selena asked softly. iAm bit out a curse and glared at the cat. Then at the Chosen. But short of taking off his pullover? G*dd*mn Cat was sticking with him. “I need some of those Milanos up there?” The Chosen reached up and took a bag from the Pepperidge Farm munchie department. “And he’s going to need some of those tortilla chips.” “Plain or the lime flavor?” “Plain.” iAm gave up the ghost and resumed servicing G*dd*mn—and the cat immediately went into full La-Z-Boy again. “He’s going to want one of the Entenmann’s pound cakes. And we’re going to bring him three ice-cold Cokes, two big Poland Springs, room temperature, and a partridge in a pear tree.” -Boo, iAm, Fritz, & Selena

During one trip, Brian’s soul took Bill’s to Heaven. Here’s how Bill described it: We walked through an enormous building similar to the Greek Parthenon. We passed angels that had radiant, golden auras who seemed to be filling out records. We then went out the back and there were children playing by a stream and waterfall. Everything was crystals and gems. The water was so clear, it seemed as if it wasn’t even there. There was also the most beautiful singing, and it wasn’t outside of me so that I was “listening” to it, but it was inside me and around me at the same time. I could not tell you a direction it was coming from, but it made me feel totally safe and at peace. Brian went on to show Bill that there are different levels in Heaven, and said that the purpose of our existence on earth is to try to live a life that brings us closer to the next level and God, who is at the highest. Brian has also explained that he was an old soul that had lived in the physical world many times and reached a very high level. It’s at these higher levels that you can interact more easily with earth, which is why Bill thinks Brian can take him on these journeys at all. I see Bill and Regina for yearly sessions, and Brian has told me that he recently went to Jesus and asked if he could have a new responsibility--to help some children cross over, rather than having God send an angel. He said that the angels were so big and the children so small that the kids were sometimes frightened of the angels. Spirit told me that Jesus laughed and gave Brian the job. Okay, so I totally realize that last part doesn’t have anything to do with what God or Heaven looks like, but I wanted to share it with you anyway, because I thought it was really neat.

I do admit to worrying sometimes about future generations of the Waltons. I know it’s unrealistic of me to expect them all to get up and throw paper routes, and I know it’s something I can’t control. But I’d hate to see any descendants of mine fall into the category of what I’d call “idle rich”—a group I’ve never had much use for. I really hope that somehow the values both Helen and I, and our kids, have always embraced can be passed on down through the generations. And even if these little future Waltons don’t feel the need to work from dawn on into the night to stay ahead of the bill collector, I hope they’ll feel compelled to do something productive and useful and challenging with their lives. Maybe it’s time for a Walton to start thinking about going into medical research and working on cures for cancer, or figuring out new ways to bring culture and education to the underprivileged, or becoming missionaries for free enterprise in the Third World. Or maybe—and this is strictly my idea—there’s another Walton merchant lurking in the wings somewhere down the line.

to Freyja.” and Odin is like “Can I at least have the octohorse?” and Loki is like “Only if I don’t have to do what you say anymore.” and Odin is like “FINE.” and Loki is like “HAHA, I PRANKED YOU THAT HORSE CAME OUT OF MY HORSE VAGINA.” And Odin is like “Ew, ick. I still want the horse though.” So the moral of the story is that only a sucker pays full price for masonry. Oh, speaking of which let me tell you about another really gross thing Loki had sex with . . . FENRIR IS A DILF So one day, Loki’s wandering around Jotunheim and he sees this chick Angrboða pronounced ANGER BOW THE and he is like “Well, I know she’s pretty ugly and her name is kinda like a reference book entry for THE ANGER BOW but you know what? I’m gonna tap that and have three kids with that and all three of those kids are going to be horrible beasts that bring on the apocalypse. I see no problems with this.” So for now, let’s just focus on the first kid: a giant wolf named Fenrir. Now Loki brings baby Fenrir to Asgard and the Aesir all instantly know that this wolf is gonna be the death of them mainly because it is a GIANT WOLF NAMED FENRIR. But instead of doing anything about it they decide to see if they can just raise it as their own presumably because they don’t want to hurt Loki’s feelings. So this god Tyr the god of single combat and being awesome gets put in charge of feeding Fenrir because he’s the only person with sufficient testicular mass to actually go near the wolf and Fenrir gets bigger and bigger and holy shit bigger until the gods start to be like “Uhh . . . we should really do something about this wolf.” So what they do is they make a big metal chain. This chain is so incredibly massive that they don’t feel right until they give it a name that name is Leyding. So they go up to Fenrir like “Hey, man I bet you totally can’t break out of this chain.” And Fenrir is like “Okay, bring it.” So they tie him up and he pretty much just breaks the chains like cobwebs and he gets famous because of that and the gods are like “Fuck, that backfired. Okay, let’s make a better chain.” so they make a chain that is TWO TIMES AS STRONG and they name it Dromi and they go back to Fenrir like “Bet you can’t break THIS chain.” And Fenrir is like “I don’t know if I want to let you tie me up again.” And the gods are like “Don’t you want to be double famous?” and Fenrir is like “Ugh, okay.” So he lets them tie him up again and he flexes a little, but the chain doesn’t break so then he kicks the chain, and it does break and the gods are all like “Okay we definitely need a better chain. Somebody call some dwarves.” So the dwarves are like “Okay the mistake you guys have been making is you have been trying to make a chain out of actual things that exist such as metal instead of abstract concepts such as the sound of a cat’s footfall.” So what the dwarves do is they take the sound of a cat’s footfall along with the roots of a mountain the sinews of a bear the beard of a woman— remember, these are dwarves— and the breath of a fish, and the spit of a bird so that’s why you can’t hear cats walking around and mountains don’t have roots and fish don’t breathe, and birds don’t spit but I think bears still probably have sinews and I have definitely met me some bearded ladies so I guess the dwarves were not that thorough. But anyway somehow they manage to distill all this shit into THE ULTIMATE

In La Spezia, we settle into our seats on the train that will bring us all the way to Naples. Nina and I take the window seats facing each other across a tiny table. Tate, of course, sits next to Nina, which puts Darren next to me. Before the train even leaves the station, the three of them pull out their iPods and press the earbuds into their ears. You’ve got to be kidding me.

Unless I get called in, I don’t have to work tomorrow.” “Perfect.” I kiss her nose. “Stay with me.” “Why is this so easy with you?” she asks, frowning. “I thought I would be nervous, and maybe scared, and I had a minute of being a little nervous.” She grins up at me. “But I’m not. I’m just… me.” My thoughts exactly. I’m just me. “I’m an easy kind of guy.” She snorts, then bites my arm. Not hard, like some girls have done in the past, making me shy away from teeth, but just enough to make me notice. And make my cock twitch. “You like to bite, don’t you?” “I guess so.” “This is new?” She shrugs and pulls away, leading me back to the bedroom. “It seems you’re bringing out all kinds of surprising things in me tonight.” “What are the others?” “Five orgasms and my first blowjob in years,” she says, tossing her thick hair over her shoulder. “Oh, and I’m perfectly comfortable naked.” “Good. Because I plan to keep you that way a lot.” I climb into the bed and pull her in with me, tucking her against me. “You want to sleep already?” she asks. “Sweetheart, you’ve worn me out.” “But I can still walk.” She sticks her lower lip out, then laughs and kisses my chin. “I’m just kidding.” “There’s always tomorrow morning.” She kisses my neck, then my collarbone, and settles in my arms as if she was born to fit there. I love how affectionate she is. Her lips rarely leave my skin. “Tomorrow morning then.” She yawns. “Goodnight, Adam.” “Goodnight.” I bury my lips in her hair and take a deep breath. She smells like sunshine and sex. Two of my favorite things.

Simple words can make a big difference You should start doing this at home. It’s great to serve people when you’re out in public, but don’t forget to serve your own family. Husbands should serve their wives. “Honey, I’m going in the kitchen. Can I bring you anything?” “Let me run and fill up your car’s gas tank so you won’t have to do it tomorrow.” “I’ll help the kids with their homework. You take a break.” Be a blessing to your spouse. If we all had this servant’s attitude toward our spouses, more marriages could stay together. I know men who expect their wives to do everything for them. “I’m not going to serve her, I expect her to serve me: cook, clean, bring my dinner, make sure my clothes are washed. Keep this house straightened up.” That’s not a wife, that’s a maid! You can hire somebody to do that. If you want a wife--if you want a friend, a lover, and someone to make your life great--then you have to be willing to serve her. Bring her breakfast in bed. Pick up your own dirty clothes. Help with the children. Make her feel special. Marriage is not a dictatorship. It’s a partnership!

and Medicaid, which would help expand coverage and bring down costs. The other thing we should be honest about is how hard it’s going to be, no matter what we do, to create significant economic opportunity in every remote area of our vast nation. In some places, the old jobs aren’t coming back, and the infrastructure and workforce needed to support big new industries aren’t there. As hard as it is, people may have to leave their hometowns and look for work elsewhere in America. We know this can have a transformative effect. In the 1990s, the Clinton administration experimented with a program called Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing, which gave poor families in public housing vouchers to move to safer, middle-income neighborhoods where their children were surrounded every day by evidence that life can be better. Twenty years later, the children of those families have grown up to earn higher incomes and attend college at higher rates than their peers who stayed behind. And the younger the kids were when they moved, the bigger boost they received. Previous generations of Americans actually moved around the country much more than we do today. Millions of black families migrated from the rural South to the urban North. Large numbers of poor whites left Appalachia to take jobs in Midwestern factories. My own father hopped a freight train from Scranton, Pennsylvania, to Chicago in 1935, looking for work. Yet today, despite all our advances, fewer Americans are moving than ever before. One of the laid-off steelworkers I met in Kentucky told me he found a good job in Columbus, Ohio, but he was doing the 120-mile commute every week because he didn’t want to move. “People from Kentucky, they want to be in Kentucky,” another said to me. “That’s something that’s just in our DNA.” I understand that feeling. People’s identities and their support systems—extended family, friends, church congregations, and so on—are rooted in where they come from. This is painful, gut-wrenching stuff. And no politician wants to be the one to say it. I believe that after we do everything we can to help create new jobs in distressed small towns and rural areas, we also have to give people the skills and tools they need to seek opportunities beyond their hometowns—and provide a strong safety net both for those who leave and those who stay. Whether it’s updating policies to meet the changing conditions of America’s workers, or encouraging greater mobility, the bottom line is the same: we can’t spend all our time staving off decline. We need to create new opportunities, not just slow down the loss of old ones. Rather than keep trying to re-create the economy of the past, we should focus on making the jobs people actually have better and figure out how to create the good jobs of the future in fields such as clean energy, health care, construction, computer coding, and advanced manufacturing. Republicans will always be better at defending yesterday. Democrats have to be in the future business. The good news is we have

Thing is, I’ve decided what I’m going to do next. I have to go back to the university, of course. Next semester, I’m cutting back my schedule. I need more freedom. I’m going to transition out, sneak up on retirement. I’m going to get myself one of these!” he exclaimed, smacking the steering wheel. “Mary’s sons are married and have children—they’re great kids, superior stepsons. One lives in Texas, one in Florida. I’m going to put my house on the market and retire by the end of school, just in time to begin traveling. I’m going to see this country one state at a time, and I’m going to drop in on those boys. They both have amazing wives. One has three children, one has two—and even though I’m a stepfather, they call me Papa instead of Grandpa. I’m going to visit them occasionally while I’m traveling, then move on to other sights, then check back in. What do you think of that idea?” Her smile was alive. “It sounds wonderful. You’ll enjoy that. Maybe I’ll even see you now and then in Virgin River.” “Or, you could come along,” he said. “You have all those military boys all over the place. We could check on them, as well. And believe me, once a couple of them get married and have children, the others fall in line. I’ve seen it a million times. As soon as I get an offer on the house—which is a good house and should bring a nice price even in a depressed economy—I’m going to start shopping for a quality RV. I’ve been looking at pictures online. Maureen, you have no idea how high tech these things have become! They now come with expandable sides, two people showers, freezers, big screens in the living room and bedroom, Whirlpool tubs—you name it! How’d you like to have a hot tub on wheels, Maureen?” She looked over at him. He was so excited by his idea, he was actually a little flushed, and she found herself hoping it wasn’t high blood pressure. If the moment ever presented itself, she’d ask about that. But after all his rambling about his future RV, all she could say was, “Come along?” “A perfect solution for both of us,” he said. “We’d have time together, we’d have fun together. We’d see the families, travel…” “George, that’s outrageous. We’ve had a few lunches—” “And we’ll have a few more! We’ll also e-mail, talk on the phone, get together occasionally—in Virgin River, but also in Phoenix and Seattle. We’ll spend the next six months figuring out if we fit as well as it seems we do.” “Long distance? Occasional visits?” she asked doubtfully. “It’ll give you time to look over my accounts to be sure you’re not getting conned out of your retirement.” He laughed at his own joke, slapping his knee. “Of course, with five brawny, overprotective sons you’re relatively safe from a dangerous guy like me.” He glanced at her and his expression was playful. “We’re not young, Maureen. We should be sure we’re attracted to each other and that we get along, but we shouldn’t waste a lot of time. Every day is precious.

thanks to Kayla. We walk around the mall with Julie in front of us. “So what was the deal with her?” I ask Kayla, bringing her hand to my lips and kissing it quickly. I can’t seem to keep my hands and lips off her. If we can’t be intimate in the way I want, I’ll take whatever I can get. “She’s just growing up. She wanted us to spend some girl time together today. She thinks she needs a training bra and wants to start wearing makeup.” Kayla giggles. “What?” I yell. Kayla nudges me and tells me to shut up. Julie turns around and eyes us suspiciously. She keeps walking when I fake a smile at her. “She’s frickin’ eight years old, Kayla!” “I know. I’m just going along with it to amuse her. Trust me, okay?” “Fine. But my eight-year-old sister better not end the day looking like a whore.” “Oh my God!” Kayla laughs out loud. “I can’t believe you just said ‘eight-year-old sister’ and ‘whore’ in the same sentence.” “Shut up! I’m not kidding.” We walk around for a bit longer before Julie decides to walk into a store. I don’t pay attention until we’re inside, and I’m surrounded by lingerie. “What the f—” A hand covers my mouth. “Shut up, Jake,” Kayla whispers fiercely. “Just play along, please.” “Fine, but I’ll wait outside.” They

My teeth clatter in my mouth as everything ripples and shudders in the storm of shells, whining, whizzing. The kid on the bicycle rolls out of sight. Untouched. A miracle. A dream. The shells abruptly cease and there is only the settling creak of the car seat, a scatter of twittering birds in the shrubs and trees. I could use some gum. Where do you buy gum so early besides the service station? It seems wrong to go there since we don't need any gasoline. We don't drive enough. A tank of gas lasts us forever. I get behind the wheel and in the mirror I can see my eyelids fluttering. I sit squeezing the steering wheel until I realize I haven't started the engine. The garage conceals me. I don't want to go out into the open. A horse whinnys – are they bringing up the artillery? It's the farm field where old Wallam tills a little garden, his yard is the biggest and runs alongside the back of ours to the farm where his family has their orchards. What's wrong with me? Sounds of explosions, bullets, voices of men. Volleys. I smell smoke. Burning things, festering ruptured corpses with maggots pulsing under horrible skin and the shells, the horse, it's hit, it shrieks, explodes apart – can we pull the gun by hand? The crew is dead too, bullets are making their bodies jump even after they have broken apart like smashed holiday nuts. I want to scream. Maybe I am? I begin breathing rapidly. I don't know how long I am there but I hear the screen door open and I key the ignition. “Car troubles?” Mr. Kincaid calls out to me from the front porch. “No troubles,” I say setting my arm out the window and holding the mirror to keep my hand steady. “Lovely day.” The sun was really rising, taking the temperature up with it, hot shards of searing light coming over the treetops to stab at everything that couldn't find the shade. I couldn't find the shade.

I admit, I’m a little confused, David.” Her voice was soft, but it wasn’t timid. Millie wasn’t timid, and I loved that about her. “You always call me David. Why?” I side-stepped the question. I was just as confused as she was and wasn’t ready to give her a response. “Because David fits you so perfectly,” she said easily, letting me change the subject. “What’s that supposed to mean?” “Names mean something. Too many parents get caught up in how a name sounds or how it’s spelled. I wonder how often they take the time to find out what a name means, or at the very least, what it means to them? Is it the name of a beloved family member? Is it the name of a place that brings back memories? What? Or is it just the name Ashley spelled A-S-C-H-L-E-I-G-H in an effort to be unique? Utahans, as religious as their population is, are great at giving out spirit-less, meaningless names with preposterous spellings." "So that’s why Moses and Georgia didn’t want to name Kathleen Taglee. I was so hurt.” She giggled and groaned, which was what I intended. “Okay. So you say David fits me perfectly. What does David mean?” “Darling. Beloved.” “Darling? Beloved? You’ve got to be kidding me!” My voice was wry, twisting the words so I mocked them even as I spoke. “You are everyone’s darling. Everyone loves you.” “Hmm. So why don’t you?” Damn. I had to stop doing that. “Because my name means work,” she replied saucily. “Work?” “Yes. That’s what Amelie means. Work.” “Oh, that’s rich,” I drawled. “Yes. And Henry means ‘ruler of the home.’ Which he loves and takes very seriously.” “He would,” I chuckled

When summer began, I headed out west. My parents had told me I needed a rest. “Your imagination,” they said, “is getting too wild. It will do you some good to relax for a while.” So they put me aboard a westbound train. To visit Aunt Fern in her house on the plains. But I was captured by cowboys, A wild-looking crowd. Their manners were rough and their voices were loud. “I’m trying to get to my aunt’s house,” I said. But they carried me off to their cow camp instead. The Cattle Boss growled, as he told me to sit, “We need a new cowboy. Our old cowboy quit. We could sure use your help. So what do you say?” I thought for a minute, then I told him, “Okay.” Then I wrote to Aunt Fern, so she’d know where I’d gone. I said not to worry, I wouldn’t be long. That night I was given a new set of clothes. Soon I looked like a wrangler from my head to my toes. But there’s more to a cowboy than boots and a hat, I found out the next day And the day after that Each day I discovered some new cowboy tricks. From roping And riding To making fire with sticks. Slowly the word spread all over the land. “That wrangler ‘Kid Bleff’ is a first-rate cowhand!” The day finally came when the roundup was through. Aunt Fern called: “Come on over. Bring your cowboys with you.” She was cooking a barbecue that very same day. So we cleaned up (a little) and we headed her way. The food was delicious. There was plenty to eat. And the band that was playing just couldn’t be beat. But suddenly I noticed a terrible sight. The cattle were stirring and stamping with fright. It’s a scene I’ll remember till my very last day. “They’re gonna stampede!” I heard somebody say. Just then they came charging. They charged right at me! I looked for a hiding place-- A rock, or a tree. What I found was a tablecloth spread out on the ground. So I turned like a matador And spun it around. It was a new kind of cowboying, a fantastic display! The cattle were frightened and stampeded…away! Then the cowboys all cheered, “Bleff’s a true buckaroo!” They shook my hand and slapped my back, And Aunt Fern hugged me, too. And that’s how I spent my summer vacation. I can hardly wait for show-and-tell!

When I started sixth grade, the other kids made fun of Brian and me because we were so skinny. They called me spider legs, skeleton girl, pipe cleaner, two-by-four, bony butt, stick woman, bean pole, and giraffe, and they said I could stay dry in the rain by standing under a telephone wire. At lunchtime, when other kids unwrapped their sandwiches or bought their hot meals, Brian and I would get out books and read. Brian told everyone he had to keep his weight down because he wanted to join the wrestling team when he got to high school. I told people that I had forgotten to bring my lunch. No one believed me, so I started hiding in the bathroom during lunch hour. I’d stay in one of the stalls with the door locked and my feet propped up so that no one would recognize my shoes. When other girls came in and threw away their lunch bags in the garbage pails, I’d go retrieve them. I couldn’t get over the way kids tossed out all this perfectly good food: apples, hard-boiled eggs, packages of peanut-butter crackers, sliced pickles, half-pint cartons of milk, cheese sandwiches with just one bite taken out because the kid didn’t like the pimentos in the cheese. I’d return to the stall and polish off my tasty finds. There was, at times, more food in the wastebasket than I could eat. The first time I found extra food—a bologna-and-cheese sandwich—I stuffed it into my purse to take home for Brian. Back in the classroom, I started worrying about how I’d explain to Brian where it came from. I was pretty sure he was rooting through the trash, too, but we never talked about it. As I sat there trying to come up with ways to justify it to Brian, I began smelling the bologna. It seemed to fill the whole room. I became terrified that the other kids could smell it, too, and that they’d turn and see my overstuffed purse, and since they all knew I never ate lunch, they’d figure out that I had pinched it from the trash. As soon as class was over, I ran to the bathroom and shoved the sandwich back in the garbage can.

Instantly, I noticed that our conversation was easy, flirtatious and exciting. It didn’t take very long for us to get to know each other. To start with, I was a little taken aback with both of them being so friendly and talkative. As we talked, I really didn’t know what to call Rita and I stammered some as I attempted to navigate around the social aspects of my dilemma. I didn’t know her last name and “Mrs. Whatjamacallit” didn’t seem appropriate, so I continued using her first name. What seemed awkward to me at first, soon became and sounded acceptable. I also noticed that Connie alternated between calling her mother “Mom” and “Rita.” At first this was strange, but soon I kind of understood the unique relationship between them. For me it seemed different, however I tend to adapt easily and now I was becoming acquainted with a girl who called her mother by her first name. The house was without central heating, but it did have a big cast iron Franklin stove in the living room. Rita looked over to me and asked if I would light the fire. “Guess so,” I replied. I soon found out that lighting the fire encompassed getting and splitting the firewood, and then tending to it. Connie showed me to the front porch where there was a big pile of cordwood, just dumped in one heap. I also noticed that the wind was picking up and was blowing the white stuff onto the porch and covering the woodpile. “Might be a good idea to bring in enough wood to last the night,” I thought aloud. This was going to become a full time job! With Connie’s able help I got a roaring fire going. Rita made sandwiches and poured us all some Coca-Cola, which she topped off with some Canadian Whiskey. Turning the damper down on the fire, I thought to myself that the Franklin stove would never heat this size house, besides the wind was coming in through the cracks around the windows and doors. I knew that the house didn’t have much insulation by how cold the walls were. The windows were single pane, which also didn’t help much, but at least it was shelter. When I mentioned this, Rita said, “Never mind, we’ll all be able to stay warm in bed.” By this time, Connie and I were clowning around and Rita reminded us that she was also there. “I may be momma but I’m not about to freeze, while you kids have all the fun! Besides we only have one bed.” Suddenly the whole scene came into focus. The sandwiches on the kitchen table wouldn’t be our only food. The sandwiches we would have that night would just be the beginning of a feast.

pranced to her cub's side. "Lucky!" she yelled. "How many times do I have to tell you to go home and stay with your siblings? You are a tiny lion cub, not a brave adventurer!" The mother lizard smiled up at Lucky. "Actually, I'm not so sure," she said. "This little cub travelled across the entire jungle and brought my lost baby home. That makes him the bravest, greatest adventurer this jungle has ever seen!" Lucky's mother's jaw dropped. She looked at the lizard. She looked at Lucky. Then she smiled. "You have proven me wrong. You really are a great adventurer! But a tiny cub like you, traveling across the entire jungle? How did you do it?" she asked. "Roar!" Lucky cried. He stood tall, puffed up his chest and said; "Because I am Lucky!" Lucky and Pec the parrot’s great adventure! The next day, Lucky was feeling especially brave. After all he saved a little lizard from the dangers of the jungle and brought him safely home. His mother was so proud of him that she didn't even punish him for not babysitting his brothers and sisters! She even gave him the best part of their meal for dinner. And he had permission to spend 2 hours in the jungle this very morning. But he had to stay close to home and come back in time to babysit his younger brother and sisters. "There is much adventuring to be done in just 2 hours!" he said to himself, as walked under the shady green canopy, following a path into the jungle. "But I am the bravest, greatest adventurer in the jungle. Watch out jungle! Here I come! Roooaaaar! “Suddenly he saw the tall grass to his right sway, but there wasn't any wind. The grass rustled as if someone was moving around. Lucky crouched down in his stalking pose that he had practiced as part of his adventure skills. He crept forward, his golden-green eyes wide and fixed on the swaying grass. Slowly, oh so slowly he moved closer and closer. He was right in front of the tall green grass, and heard the rustling again. "ROOOOOAAAARRR!" He burst through the grass with his very best roar and his very best pounce. "AAAAACCCCCCKKKKKK" screeched a large shiny grey parrot. "What is wrong with you?! It is extremely rude to just bust into a parrot's home without knocking! I swear, kids these days just don't have any manners!" The parrot shrieked right into Lucky's ear. "Owwww. Stop it! I am a brave adventurer and I am saving you!" Lucky snapped back, "It's also rude to yell in the ear of the lion saving your life" The parrot's head feathers stood up on the back of his head like he had a mohawk, and he glared at Lucky from piercing yellow eyes. "Lions are known to eat birds like me. I am not going to let my glorious self, become your breakfast. I am a mighty warrior and if you eat me, I will give you a very upset belly. I promise". Lucky laughed a barky lion laugh, "I do not eat birds. My mother is a great hunter and brings home only the biggest and fattest of animals for us to eat. Besides, I will be a great adventurer, the greatest and bravest in the jungle". Pec's shimmering grey head feathers slowly lowered. He shook his head, stuck his beak under his wing and looked at Lucky from the corner of his yellowish eye. "A brave adventurer, hmm? You look more like a little lion cub getting into mischief" he said as he brought his head from under his wing. “My name is Pec. What is yours?" he asked. "My name is Lucky and I don't get into mischief. Just yesterday I saved a lizard from a deep, scary crack in the ground. He could have died. I even took him home and it was a long ways away" Lucky said as proudly as he could after being squawked at by a big feathery bird. Pec's eyes twinkled at him and he opened his sharply hooked beak letting out a squeaky laugh. "I believe you, young Lucky. And, since you are so good at helping others, could you

What happened to the troubled young reporter who almost brought this magazine down The last time I talked to Stephen Glass, he was pleading with me on the phone to protect him from Charles Lane. Chuck, as we called him, was the editor of The New Republic and Steve was my colleague and very good friend, maybe something like a little brother, though we are only two years apart in age. Steve had a way of inspiring loyalty, not jealousy, in his fellow young writers, which was remarkable given how spectacularly successful he’d been in such a short time. While the rest of us were still scratching our way out of the intern pit, he was becoming a franchise, turning out bizarre and amazing stories week after week for The New Republic, Harper’s, and Rolling Stone— each one a home run. I didn’t know when he called me that he’d made up nearly all of the bizarre and amazing stories, that he was the perpetrator of probably the most elaborate fraud in journalistic history, that he would soon become famous on a whole new scale. I didn’t even know he had a dark side. It was the spring of 1998 and he was still just my hapless friend Steve, who padded into my office ten times a day in white socks and was more interested in alphabetizing beer than drinking it. When he called, I was in New York and I said I would come back to D.C. right away. I probably said something about Chuck like: “Fuck him. He can’t fire you. He can’t possibly think you would do that.” I was wrong, and Chuck, ever-resistant to Steve’s charms, was as right as he’d been in his life. The story was front-page news all over the world. The staff (me included) spent several weeks re-reporting all of Steve’s articles. It turned out that Steve had been making up characters, scenes, events, whole stories from first word to last. He made up some funny stuff—a convention of Monica Lewinsky memorabilia—and also some really awful stuff: racist cab drivers, sexist Republicans, desperate poor people calling in to a psychic hotline, career-damaging quotes about politicians. In fact, we eventually figured out that very few of his stories were completely true. Not only that, but he went to extreme lengths to hide his fabrications, filling notebooks with fake interview notes and creating fake business cards and fake voicemails. (Remember, this was before most people used Google. Plus, Steve had been the head of The New Republic ’s fact-checking department.) Once we knew what he’d done, I tried to call Steve, but he never called back. He just went missing, like the kids on the milk cartons. It was weird. People often ask me if I felt “betrayed,” but really I was deeply unsettled, like I’d woken up in the wrong room. I wondered whether Steve had lied to me about personal things, too. I wondered how, even after he’d been caught, he could bring himself to recruit me to defend him, knowing I’d be risking my job to do so. I wondered how I could spend more time with a person during the week than I spent with my husband and not suspect a thing. (And I didn’t. It came as a total surprise). And I wondered what else I didn’t know about people. Could my brother be a drug addict? Did my best friend actually hate me? Jon Chait, now a political writer for New York and back then the smart young wonk in our trio, was in Paris when the scandal broke. Overnight, Steve went from “being one of my best friends to someone I read about in The International Herald Tribune, ” Chait recalled. The transition was so abrupt that, for months, Jon dreamed that he’d run into him or that Steve wanted to talk to him. Then, after a while, the dreams stopped. The Monica Lewinsky scandal petered out, George W. Bush became president, we all got cell phones, laptops, spouses, children. Over the years, Steve Glass got mixed up in our minds with the fictionalized Stephen Glass from his own 2003 roman à clef, The Fabulist, or Steve Glass as played by Hayden Christiansen in the 2003

The thing is, I think I like kids, more or less. I was an English teacher for a few years before I quit to enter publishing, and I enjoyed most of the work—the performing, the encouraging, the dispensing of door-opening revelations, even the wheedling and dickering you have to do with reluctant, sullen, grade-grubbing teens—but I was driven out of the classroom by the prospect of a life spent correcting papers. Maybe that reflects badly on me, makes me seem selfish or lacking in stick-to-itiveness or community spirit, or maybe it’s just evidence that I’d never have survived as a parent, with all the correcting and explaining that job entails. But believe me, you don’t even have to read sixty eighth-grade essays on To Kill a Mockingbird to suffer an unholy agony. Just carrying them around in your briefcase can bring you to tears from the anticipated tedium.

Dear friends and enemies, Season’s greetings! It’s me, Serge! Don’t you just hate these form letters people stuff in Christmas cards? Nothing screams “you’re close to my heart” like a once-a-year Xerox. Plus, all the lame jazz that’s going on in their lives. “Had a great time in Memphis.” “Bobby lost his retainer down a storm drain.” “I think the neighbors are dealing drugs.” But this letter is different. You are special to me. I’m just forced to use a copy machine and gloves because of advancements in forensics. I love those TV shows! Has a whole year already flown by? Much to report! Let’s get to it! Number one: I ended a war. You guessed correct, the War on Christmas! When I first heard about it, I said to Coleman, “That’s just not right! We must enlist!” I rushed to the front lines, running downtown yelling “Merry Christmas” at everyone I saw. And they’re all saying “Merry Christmas” back. Hmmm. That’s odd: Nobody’s stopping us from saying “Merry Christmas.” Then I did some research, and it turns out the real war is against people saying “Happy holidays.” The nerve: trying to be inclusive. So, everyone … Merry Christmas! Happy Hannukah! Good times! Soul Train! Purple mountain majesties! The Pompatus of Love! There. War over. And just before it became a quagmire. Next: Decline of Florida Roundup. —They tore down the Big Bamboo Lounge near Orlando. Where was everybody on that one? —Remember the old “Big Daddy’s” lounges around Florida with the logo of that bearded guy? They’re now Flannery’s or something. —They closed 20,000 Leagues. And opened Buzz Lightyear. I offered to bring my own submarine. Okay, actually threatened, but they only wanted to discuss it in the security office. I’ve been doing a lot of running lately at theme parks. —Here’s a warm-and-fuzzy. Anyone who grew up down here knows this one, and everyone else won’t have any idea what I’m talking about: that schoolyard rumor of the girl bitten by a rattlesnake on the Steeplechase at Pirate’s World (now condos). I’ve started dropping it into all conversations with mixed results. —In John Mellencamp’s megahit “Pink Houses,” the guy compliments his wife’s beauty by saying her face could “stop a clock.” Doesn’t that mean she was butt ugly? Nothing to do with Florida. Just been bugging me. Good news alert! I’ve decided to become a children’s author! Instilling state pride in the youngest residents may be the only way to save the future. The book’s almost finished. I’ve only completed the first page, but the rest just flows after that. It’s called Shrimp Boat Surprise. Coleman asked what the title meant, and I said life is like sailing on one big, happy shrimp boat. He asked what the surprise was, and I said you grow up and learn that life bones you up the ass ten ways to Tuesday. He started reading and asked if a children’s book should have the word “motherfucker” eight times on the first page. I say, absolutely. They’re little kids, after all. If you want a lesson to stick, you have to hammer it home through repetition…In advance: Happy New Year! (Unlike 2008—ouch!)

Wait a minute, look at them. Smiling and laughing. Just having a wonderful time, enjoying themselves to the fullest. Why shouldn't they? They deserve it. It's Christmas. Their Christmas. The best day I ever had was the day Karla found me and brought me here, to my home. Ryan, Kaley, Matt and yes, even Derek, are my family too. I'm treated so well I've lost perspective. Well, what do you expect, I am a dog after all. They always find the time to take me for walks, play with me in the yard, bring me to the vet, get me in out of the heat and cold, cuddle up with me before bedtime and even celebrate my birthday. Today is for them and not for me. The least I can do is to let them enjoy it without me getting in the way. But if this continues tomorrow there'll be hell to pay! Who am I kidding, it'll never happen.

I’m not doing it all. Who could? I can’t. You can’t. I decided what tricks belonged on my beam and dropped the rest or figured out a way to delegate. I love to write but hate web management. Off the beam. I could not juggle weekend travel, weeknight activities (times five kids . . . be near, Jesus), and a weekly small group, so as much as I love our church people, we aren’t in a group right now. (And I am the pastor’s wife, so let that speak freedom over your shoulds.) Off the beam. Cooking and sit-down dinners? Life-giving for me. On the beam. Coffee with everyone who wants to “pick my brain”? I simply can’t. Off the beam. After-hours with our best friends on the patio? Must. On the beam. Classroom Mom? I don’t have the skill set. Off the beam. You get to do this too. You have permission to examine all the tricks and decide what should stay. What parts do you love? What are you good at? What brings you life? What has to stay during this season? Don’t look sideways for these answers. Don’t transplant someone else’s keepers onto your beam.

Children Are a Gift Behold, children are a gift of the LORD; the fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one’s youth. —PSALM 127:3 NASB     In a recent women’s Bible study, the teacher asked the group, “Did you feel loved by your parents when you were a child?” Here are some of the responses. • “A lot of pizza came to the house on Friday nights when my parents went out for the evening.” • “I got in their way. I wasn’t important to them.” • “They were too busy for me.” • “Mom didn’t have to work, but she did just so she wouldn’t have to be home with us kids.” • “I spent too much time with a babysitter.” • “Mom was too involved at the country club to spend time with me.” • “Dad took us on trips, but he played golf all the time we were away.” So many of the ladies felt they were rejected by their parents in their childhoods. There was very little love in their homes. What would your children say in response to the same question? I’m sure we all would gain insight from our children’s answers. In today’s verse we see that children are a reward (gift) from the Lord. In Hebrew, “gift” means “property—a possession.” Truly, God has loaned us His property or possessions to care for and to enjoy for a certain period of time. My Bob loves to grow vegetables in his raised-bed garden each summer. I am amazed at what it takes to get a good crop. He cultivates the soil, sows seeds, waters, fertilizes, weeds, and prunes. Raising children takes a lot of time, care, nurturing, and cultivating as well. We can’t neglect these responsibilities if we are going to produce good fruit. Left to itself, the garden—and our children—will end up weeds. Bob always has a smile on his face when he brings a big basket full of corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, and beans into the kitchen. As the harvest is Bob’s reward, so children are parents’ rewards. Let your home be a place where its members come to be rejuvenated after a very busy time away from it. We liked to call our home the “trauma center”—a place where we could make mistakes, but also where there was healing. Perfect people didn’t reside at our address. We tried to teach that we all make mistakes and certainly aren’t always right. Quite often in our home we could hear the two

I knew the one thing I wanted to do more than anything was to get to Steve. I needed to bring my kids home as fast as possible. I didn’t understand what had been going on in the rest of the world. Steve’s accident had occurred at eleven o’clock in the morning. The official time of death was made at twelve noon, the exact time that Bindi had looked at her watch and said, for no apparent reason, “It’s twelve o’clock.” Now I had to go out to the car and tell Bindi and Robert what had happened to their daddy. How do you tell an eight-year-old child that her father has died? A two-year-old boy? The person they loved most in the world was gone, the person they looked up to, relied on, and emulated, who played with them in the bubble bath and told them stories about when he was a naughty little boy, who took them for motorbike rides and got them ice cream, went on croc-catching adventures and showed them the world’s wildlife. I had to tell them that they had lost this most important person, on this most beautiful day. Emma came in and I told her what had happened. Suddenly I felt very sick. I didn’t know if I could stand up, and I asked to use the restroom. Then I realized this was the exact time for me to be strong. For years I had counted on Steve’s strength. At six feet tall and two hundred pounds, he was a force to be reckoned with. But he always told me there were different kinds of strength. Steve said he could count on me to be strong when times were hard. I thought about that, and I suddenly understood there must be a reason that I was here and he was gone. I needed to help his kids, to be there for our children. All I wanted to do was run, and run, and run. But I had to stay. With Emma at my side, I went outside and climbed into the car. Bindi had opened up the raspberries again. I put them away and sat her down. She knew instantly by my face that something was wrong. “Did something happen to one of the animals at the zoo?” she asked. “Something happened to Daddy,” I said. “He was diving, and he had an accident.” I told her everything that I knew about what had happened. She cried. We all cried. Robert still slept.

I knew the one thing I wanted to do more than anything was to get to Steve. I needed to bring my kids home as fast as possible. I didn’t understand what had been going on in the rest of the world. Steve’s accident had occurred at eleven o’clock in the morning. The official time of death was made at twelve noon, the exact time that Bindi had looked at her watch and said, for no apparent reason, “It’s twelve o’clock.” Now I had to go out to the car and tell Bindi and Robert what had happened to their daddy. How do you tell an eight-year-old child that her father has died? A two-year-old boy? The person they loved most in the world was gone, the person they looked up to, relied on, and emulated, who played with them in the bubble bath and told them stories about when he was a naughty little boy, who took them for motorbike rides and got them ice cream, went on croc-catching adventures and showed them the world’s wildlife. I had to tell them that they had lost this most important person, on this most beautiful day.

Come on, Melinda. You can’t avoid it forever. We both know you’re pregnant.” “Ugh,” she said, accepting the cool, wet cloth. She pressed it to her face, her brow, her neck. She didn’t have any more to say. But Jack knew. There had been tears, exhaustion, nausea. She turned watering eyes up to him. He shrugged and said, “You eased up on the breast-feeding, popped an egg and I nailed it.” Her eyes narrowed as if to say she did not appreciate the explanation. He held out a hand to bring her to her feet. “You have to wean David,” he said. “Your body can’t completely nourish two children. You’ll get weak. You’re already exhausted.” “I don’t want to be pregnant right now,” she said. “I’m barely over being pregnant.” “I understand.” “No, you don’t. Because you haven’t ever been pregnant.” He thought this would probably be a bad time to tell her that he did so understand, since he had lived with a pregnant person and listened very attentively to every complaint. “We should go see John right away, so you can find out how pregnant.” “How long have you suspected?” she asked him. “I don’t know. A few weeks. It was a little tougher this time….” “Oh, yeah?” “Well, yeah. Since you haven’t had a period since the first time I laid a hand on you. God, for a supposedly sterile woman, you certainly are fertile.” Then he grinned, fully aware it would have got him smacked if he hadn’t been holding the baby. She whirled away from him and went to sit on their bed. She put her face in her hands and began to cry. Well, he’d been expecting exactly this. There’d been a lot of crying lately and he knew she was going to be mighty pissed off. He sat down beside her, put an arm around her and pulled her close. David patted her head. “It’s going to be okay,” he said. “I’m not delivering this one. I want that understood.” “Try not to be cute,” she said through her tears. “I think my back already hurts.” “Can I get you something? Soda? Crackers? Arsenic?” “Very funny.” She turned her head to look at him. “Are you upset?” He shook his head. “I’m sorry it happened so soon. Sorry for you. I know there are times you get damned uncomfortable and I wanted you to get a break.” “I should never have gone away with you.” “Nah. You were already pregnant. Wanna bet?” “You knew before that?” “I wondered why you were so emotional, and that was a possible reason. I never bought your whole sterile thing. But I don’t have a problem with it. I wanted more kids. I like the idea of a larger family than the three of us. I come from a big family.” “There will not be five, I can guarantee you that,” she said. Then she bored a hole through him with her eyes. “Snip, snip.” “You’re not going to blame this on me, Mel. I suggested birth control. A couple of times, as a matter of fact. You were the one said it could never happen twice. And then explained that whole business about not ovulating while you’re nursing. How’s that working for you so far? Hmm?” “Screw you,” she said, not sweetly. “Well, obviously…” “I’d like you to understand I wasn’t relying on that breast-feeding thing. I’m a midwife—I know that’s not foolproof. I really didn’t think it possible that… Shit,” she said. She sighed deeply. “I just barely got back into my jeans….” “Yeah, those jeans. Whoa, damn. Those jeans really do it to me. No one wears a pair of jeans like you do.” “Aren’t you getting a little sick of having a fat wife?” “You’re not fat. You’re perfect. I love your body, pregnant and unpregnant. I know you’re trying to get me all worked up, but I’m not going there. You can try to pick a fight with me all day and I just won’t play. It wouldn’t be a fair fight—you’re out to get me and we both know it. Do you have appointments this morning?” “Why?” “Because I want to go to Grace Valley for an ultrasound. I want to know when I have to have the house done.” *

You’re such an ass.” I growled and took another step back, “I just don’t understand why we can’t be friends all the time. I don’t want to be your friend on Sunday and the girl you don’t acknowledge every other day of the week. I want the same thing every day. So you decide what that is and let me know.” I moved to walk around him, but he put his arm up against the wall of the hallway, blocking me in. “I’ll tell you, if you tell me.” “Tell you what?” “I feel like I’m just one in a group of Harper’s many guys, but I’m not getting the benefits. So tell me, if I act like your friend, will I get to fuck you too?” My fist was aiming straight for that perfectly shaped nose but Chase was slammed into the wall before I could connect. Brandon’s forearm was pressed against Chase’s throat and his tan face was turning red with anger. “What the hell did you just say to her?” He growled and pressed Chase harder into the wall. Chase’s only response was to spit in Brandon’s face. Brandon’s other hand grabbed Chase’s shirt to bring him forward while the arm that had been against his throat delivered a hard blow to Chase’s stomach. Chase swung and hit the wall when Brandon moved, but he’d moved right into Chase’s left hook. I started yelling at them to stop and somehow they ended up on the floor with Chase on top. Just as the other housemates came out of their rooms, Brandon knocked Chase’s head to the side and Chase spit again on Brandon’s face, this time it was full of blood. “Shit, again?” Brad huffed as he ran past me and grabbed Chase’s arms to pin them back. Derek kept Brandon on the floor while Zach helped Brad haul Chase towards a hall on the opposite side of the living room. “Holy Crap Princess,” Drew slung his arm around my shoulders and I shook it off, “you really drive guys crazy don’t you? This has been the most entertaining two months we’ve ever had in this house, and it all seems to come back to you.” “Drew.” “Yeah Princess?” “If you want to have kids at some point in life, I suggest you leave.” He tsked at me, but wisely moved away, “So touchy. Hey B, you uh, got a little something on your face.” “I’m about to let him up.” Derek warned and Drew took off for the back yard. As soon as Derek let go, Brandon was up and stalking toward his bathroom, not saying a word to me. Derek handed me Brandon’s back pack and nodded toward his bedroom. “Wait for him in there, I’m gonna go talk to him though I’m positive I already know what he’s gonna say. Just give him a few minutes, and Harper?” “Hmm?” “Stay away from Chase. It’ll make all of this a lot easier.” I

He narrows his eyes at me. “What was in the bag?” “Nothing.” Heat creeps up my cheeks. “Was too. What was it?” “Nothing,” I say again. My face is flaming hot. “Are you ready to go to bed?” He nods, and looks me up and down. He goes into the bathroom to brush his teeth. He comes back carrying the box of tampons that I thought I’d hidden behind the towels. “You had your sisters bring you tampons?” He laughs. And it’s not a snicker. It’s a great big belly laugh. I expect him to wipe his eyes any second. I snatch them out of his hand and stick them back under the counter. “That is not amusing.” “Are you kidding?” he cackles. “That shit’s funny as hell.” He laughs for a moment and then he finally sobers. “Why didn’t you tell me you needed them? I would have gone to the store.” My eyes jerk up. He’s serious. “It’s kind of a girl thing.” I scratch my nose, trying to find something to do with my hands. “It’s a boy thing, too, when a boy’s girl needs them. Next time, just tell me and I’ll go get them.” He kisses my forehead. “Thanks,” I say quietly. He

I’m trying to make a profit. I’m using batteries, toilet paper, and paper towels as currency. Each is something that will eventually be in short supply.” “You’re trying to get all the toilet paper in town?” Astrid shrilled. “Are you kidding?” “No, Astrid, I’m not kidding,” Albert said. “Look, right now, kids are playing with the stuff. I saw little kids throwing rolls of it around on their lawns like it was a toy. So—” “So your solution is to try and take it all away from people?” “You’d rather see it wasted?” “Yeah, actually,” Astrid huffed. “Rather than you getting it all for yourself. You’re acting like a jerk.” Albert’s eyes flared. “Look, Astrid, now kids know they can buy their way into the club with it. So they’re not going to waste it anymore.” “No, they’re going to give it all to you,” she shot back. “And what happens when they need some?” “Then there will still be some left because I made it valuable.” “Valuable to you.” “Valuable to everyone, Astrid.” “It’s you taking advantage of kids dumb enough not to know any better. Sam, you have to put a stop to this.” Sam had drifted away from the conversation, his head full of the music. He snapped back. “She’s right, Albert, this isn’t okay. You didn’t get permission—” “I didn’t think I needed permission to give kids what they want. I mean, I’m not threatening anyone, saying, ‘Give me your toilet paper, give me your batteries.’ I’m just playing some music and saying, ‘If you want to come in and dance, then it’ll cost you.’” “Dude, I respect you being ambitious and all,” Sam said. “But I have to shut this down. You never got permission, even, let alone asked us if it was okay to charge people.” Albert said, “Sam, I respect you more than I can even say. And Astrid, you are way smarter than me. But I don’t see how you have the right to shut me down.” That was it for Sam. “Okay, I tried to be nice. But I am the mayor. I was elected, as you probably remember, since I think you voted for me.” “I did. I’d do it again, man. But Sam, Astrid, you guys are wrong here. This club is about all these kids have that can get them together for a good time. They’re sitting in their homes starving and feeling sad and scared. When they’re dancing, they forget how hungry and sad they are. This is a good thing I’m doing.” Sam stared hard at Albert, a stare that kids in Perdido Beach took seriously. But Albert did not back down. “Sam, how many cantaloupes did Edilio manage to bring back with kids who were rounded up and forced to work?” Albert asked. “Not many,” Sam admitted. “Orc picked a whole truckload of cabbage. Before the zekes figured out how to get at him. Because we paid Orc to work.” “He did it because he’s the world’s youngest alcoholic and you paid him with beer,” Astrid snapped. “I know what you want, Albert. You want to get everything for yourself and be this big, important guy. But you know what? This is a whole new world. We have a chance to make it a better world. It doesn’t have to be about some people getting over on everyone else. It can be fair to everyone.” Albert laughed. “Everyone can be equally hungry. In a week or so, everyone can starve.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. —Proverbs 3:5 (NIV) LEARNING TO TRUST I clicked my pen against the couch cushion and stared at my husband, waiting for him to respond. So far, the notebook on my lap was empty. “I don’t know,” Ryan finally said. I sighed. Earlier that day, we had officially decided to send out support letters for our adoption. We were sitting in our living room, attempting to make a list of people to whom we should send them. We weren’t sure if many of our aunts and uncles and cousins would understand our heart for the orphan. We had already run into our fair share of interesting reactions when we announced our intention to adopt. Family members didn’t understand why we would take this emotional and financial risk to travel to a war-torn country, just so we could bring some kid we don’t know into our home. Some of them looked at us like we were crazy. Our worries reached their peak, so we put down the notebook and did what we should have done in the beginning. We prayed. And afterward, when we said our amens, Ryan looked at me. “God can work in any heart—even the ones we think are unlikely.” That afternoon, we sent out the letters to everyone. Forgive me, Lord, for all the times I’ve let my fear and doubt limit Your power. Help me to be faithful with what I can control and trust You with the rest. —Katie Ganshert Digging Deeper: Jo 1:9; Ps 56:3–4; 2 Tm 1:7

Finally, on Wednesday, they began to lower the sedation again, and immediately he reached for the ventilator tube and tried to pull it out. “Don’t fight it,” I told him again and again, trying to explain what was happening. I held his hand. The nurse came in and told me they were going to try to take the ventilator out. “Do you want me to stay, or leave you?” I asked him. His eyes were closed, but he put his hand out and rubbed my back. Just for a moment. He’s there! I wanted to shout. Everything’s going to be okay. The antibiotics must be working! I wanted to sing and shout and dance. After the ventilator was out, he began opening his eyes just a crack when someone came in to say hello. And things got even better--he was calm although he was still tied down, and when a friend and Willie came in to say hello, Jep said, “What’s up?” I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Those were the first words I’d heard him say since he’d gone deer hunting. I questioned him a little, wanting to know what he remembered, but he couldn’t talk much and still seemed very sleepy, dozing off every few minutes. Thursday morning was one of the best days of my life because Jep woke up bright-eyed. “Why am I in here? What happened?” he asked. He didn’t remember anything. He looked awake and alert and rested. But I was exhausted, having gotten very little sleep or food and not knowing if Jep would live or die, while he’d been taking the longest nap of his life. We held hands, and though I was exhausted, I was happy. Thursday afternoon he talked a little more and ate a cracker. He was back. Slowly but surely, he was coming back. He knew who I was, so I believed he would know who the kids were. And he started talking more and more. Thank you, Lord, for bringing Jep back to me.

As John arranged to bring Steve home, the media pressure steadily increased. I told Wes I wanted to go meet the plane, but that I wouldn’t take the kids. This was my time to be with my soul mate, and I needed to do it on my own. I headed out with a police escort. The Queensland police were considerate and professional, and an officer named Annie was personally assigned to make sure the overwhelming media attention did not interfere with my private moment to say good-bye to Steve. Wes accompanied me. It was night. As the seaplane came in, I recognized it as the same one that had taken Steve on many South Pacific adventures, in search of sea snakes, crested iguanas, or sharks. The ranks of police stood at attention. Many of them had met Steve previously. Once again, I was overwhelmed to see the looks of grief on their faces. The plane landed, and I had a moment to sit with Steve on my own. It was a bit of an effort to clamber up into the back of the plane. A simple wooden casket rested inside, still secured. I knew that who Steve was, his spirit and his soul, were no longer there, but it was strange how I couldn’t cry. I sat down and leaned my head against the wooden box that held his body and felt such strange peace. In some way, we were together again.

Using the satellite phone connection, I finally reached Croc One. The captain, Kris, was in tears. I finally tracked down John Stainton, and he assured me that he hadn’t left Steve’s side. “I’ve got a charter plane coming,” John said. “I’ll get him home, Terri.” I asked about Steve’s personal effects. Steve had had on his khakis and wet-suit boots while he was diving, but because he had no jewelry or anything of value, the medical examiner had destroyed all his clothing. I was devastated. It’s completely unpredictable what one will hold dear in a time of grief, particularly in the case of an accident. I remember thinking, I’ve got to sit down with the powers that be and change these regulations. The family should decide what should be destroyed and what should be kept. I needed to focus on something other than losing Steve. That fact was just too hard to get my head around. As John arranged to bring Steve home, the media pressure steadily increased. I told Wes I wanted to go meet the plane, but that I wouldn’t take the kids. This was my time to be with my soul mate, and I needed to do it on my own. I headed out with a police escort. The Queensland police were considerate and professional, and an officer named Annie was personally assigned to make sure the overwhelming media attention did not interfere with my private moment to say good-bye to Steve. Wes accompanied me. It was night. As the seaplane came in, I recognized it as the same one that had taken Steve on many South Pacific adventures, in search of sea snakes, crested iguanas, or sharks. The ranks of police stood at attention. Many of them had met Steve previously. Once again, I was overwhelmed to see the looks of grief on their faces. The plane landed, and I had a moment to sit with Steve on my own. It was a bit of an effort to clamber up into the back of the plane. A simple wooden casket rested inside, still secured. I knew that who Steve was, his spirit and his soul, were no longer there, but it was strange how I couldn’t cry. I sat down and leaned my head against the wooden box that held his body and felt such strange peace. In some way, we were together again.

​He stared at me the entire time he said it. ​I was definitely in trouble now. Betrayal ​We were halfway out of school when Dad finally burst into an angry shout: “You made me apologize!” ​I couldn’t help the smile that popped back onto my face. “Yeah,” I said. “Being forced to do something you don’t want to do must be horrible. I wonder what that is like.” I let the words hang in the air between us. He knew exactly what I meant. After all, he’d made me apologize to the football team for being late and embarrassed me beyond belief just a few weeks ago! ​Dad stood in my way, bringing me to a halt. “You and I need to talk, mister. I think you’re letting this adult thing go to your head!” ​I nodded. “Uh huh, uh huh.” ​I wasn’t really listening. I was distracted by the two figures coming out of the sports hall in front of us. I frowned. Why was anyone still in the school at this hour? Did more people have parent-teacher meetings? Then I remembered. Today was the day of the school fair meeting! I grabbed Dad by

We agree to spend “Sunday dinner” in hygge. We all promise to help one another as a team in creating a cozy atmosphere where everyone feels safe and no one needs to have their guard up. We agree to try to . . . Turn off the phones and the iPads. Leave our drama at the door. There are other times to focus on our problems. Hygge is about creating a safe place to relax with others and leave the everyday stressors outside. Not complain unnecessarily. Look for ways to help out so that no one person gets stuck doing all the work. Light candles if we are inside. Make a conscious effort to enjoy the food and the drinks. Not bring up controversial topics like politics. Anything that creates a fight or an argument is not hyggeligt. We can have those discussions at other times. Tell and retell funny, lovely, and uplifting stories about one another from the past. Not brag too much. Bragging can be subtly divisive. Not compete (think “we” not “me”). Not talk badly about others or focus on negativity. Play games that the whole group can participate in. Make a conscious effort to feel gratitude for the people around us who love us.

When Hoggard’s piece on the poll came out, O’Neal’s Olympic teammates—NBA veterans who knew the importance of getting paid—teed off. In particular Charles Barkley, the Phoenix Suns forward and resident trash talker, refused to hold back. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he told O’Neal. “You bring glory to this redneck, one-horse town, and this is what they think of you? Get out as soon as you can. Fuck these people.” It was harsh. But it was also correct.

I drop Eileen and the kids off at home so I can go and visit Mam, the care home is on lockdown so I can't go inside, but we can talk through the window, I call and Mam's caregivers bring her up to the window, she is at a point where she is not even sure what a window is anymore, she thinks if she can see you through the clear glass, she can reach right through it. I look at her straight blond hair, the colour of Irish butter, and her clear blue eyes, I put up my hand for a wave and she responds by reaching her hand out as if she wants to hold my hand, I place my palm against the window and she puts her hand against my palm on her side, I can almost feel it, almost. She looks thinner now and I wonder if she knows me or remembers my name, she looks up at me then and her eyes light up, she knows me. I blow her a kiss and she tries to return it but she can't quite figure out how to do it, I love that she is trying, and if I don't get anything else today on my birthday, I'll take this effort at a kiss and a clasped hand from Mam, the only birthday gift I need.

Exercise: Win-Win Problem Solving with a Positive Problem A great place to start bringing win-win into your life is with a positive problem, such as where to go on your next vacation or what to do on the weekend. Here’s how to do it: Decide on a positive decision you need to make that you want everyone’s input on. Invite your children into a conversation with you, and have a big piece of paper ready. State the problem simply (“We have both days open next weekend and we’d like to decide what to do”). Identify your needs (for example, “I’m going to need to take care of my body with some exercise”). Ask each person what he or she will be needing (“What do you think you will be needing next weekend?”). Write everything down. Be sure to translate their solutions into underlying needs. Ask the question, “What will that do for you/me/us?” to suss out the underlying needs. Brainstorm ideas, writing every single idea down. Do not evaluate yet! When all the ideas are out there, use the , , ? system to move quickly through the list of ideas. Practice staying grounded, listening reflectively, and using your I-messages as needed. Decide upon the plan that meets everyone’s needs. Write out your plan, so that your child can see her ideas on paper. Finally, don’t forget to check in! After your weekend is over, come back to your notes and have a conversation about how it went. Did everyone get his or her needs met? This step shows that you take your child’s input seriously and that her needs matter to you—making her more likely to cooperate voluntarily in the future, when the situation may be more emotionally heated.

BERNARDINE QUINN: We’re calling marriage equality ‘equality’ as if the day that there’s a bill stamped saying lesbian and gay people can get married that we’ll have full equality. Yet in Meath, there isn’t one single support service for a young lesbian or gay person to attend; there isn’t one qualified full-time youth worker to work with young LGBT people; there is absolutely zero trans services, where the trans services in Dublin are mediocre at best. There’s something about ‘marriage equality’ – that we’ll all be equal when marriage comes in, when a kid in west Kerry doesn’t even have a telephone number of a helpline that he can ring for support. This was raised by our young people to Mairead McGuinness and to Mary Lou McDonald when they were here, just to say, thinking that your work around marriage equality – that that’s not all. The allocation of finances to LGBT work in this country is tiny compared to what is given to most other services. There’s something about calling it ‘equality’. It’s another step on the ladder and it’s a hugely important step … But it isn’t all. There’s another battle after that, and that is to get services to west Donegal, to Mayo, into the Midlands, to get real, solid support in these areas so that a young LGBT person has something in every county, trained qualified people to talk to. In some areas where those services aren’t available, where there isn’t training for schools, where there’s nobody that a kid can talk to, to say that they think they’re transgender – I don’t want to sound negative – I think marriage equality is going to be fantastic for a lot of lesbian and gay people. I think if you were 14 and coming out today, your story is going to be so much more different than when I was 14. The prospects of you considering yourself what every other young person considers themselves of 14 when you think about your future and what you’re going to do: you’re going to meet the person that you love, you’re going to get married, going to have kids, going to have the house and the picket fence. That will be an option for a kid. When I came out, those dreams were put very firmly away. I was never going to get married, I was never going to have children, I was never going to make my family proud, my dad was never going to walk me up the aisle. All of those kinds of things were not even an option when I came out. As a matter of fact, there was a better chance that I was going to have to go to London, I was going to bring huge shame on my family, I probably would end up not speaking to half my siblings and my parents, having to go away and fend for myself. That was my option. I think that option has dramatically changed. People can live in their home towns easier now … Anything that makes a young person’s life easier, and gives them more opportunities, is fantastic. I think that a young person, 14, 15, only starting to discover themselves, they’ve got a whole other suite of options. They can talk about, ‘I’ll eventually marry my partner.’ I think I’m only after saying that for the first time in my life, that there will be an option to marry my partner.

Have you ever looked at a picture of yourself when you were a kid? Or pictures of famous people when they were kids? It seems to me that they can either make you happy or sad. There's a lovely picture of Paul McCartney as a little boy, and the first time I saw it, it made me feel good: all that talent, all that money, all those years of blissed-out domesticity, a rock-solid marriage and lovely kids, and he doesn't even know it yet. But then there are others — JFK and all the rock deaths and fuckups, people who went mad, people who came off the rails, people who murdered, who made themselves or other people miserable in ways too numerous to mention, and you think, stop right there! This is as good as it gets! Over the last couple of years, the photos of me when I was a kid, the ones that I never wanted old girlfriends to see . . . well, they've started to give me a little pang of something, not unhappiness, exactly, but some kind of quiet, deep regret. There's one of me in a cowboy hat, pointing a gun at the camera, trying to look like a cowboy but failing, and I can hardly bring myself to look at it now. Laura thought it was sweet (she used that word! Sweet, the opposite of sour!) and pinned it up in the kitchen, but I've put it back in a drawer. I keep wanting to apologize to the little guy: 'I'm sorry, I've let you down. I was the person who was supposed to look after you, but I blew it: I made wrong decisions at bad times, and I turned you into me.

could find him any time Jones wanted. I felt uncomfortable doing it, and I never went out on something like that again. But [Jones] had other people to send.” Juanell Smart, present at the Planning Commission meeting where Jones humiliated Laurie Efrein, was disgusted by the incident, and further offended when, at another meeting, someone alleged that her husband, David Wise, had tapped Jones’s phone with Smart’s full knowledge, if not cooperation. “I started crying, and I told Jim that I wanted out. He said to me, ‘Then you’ll have to move a hundred miles away.’ I told him I wouldn’t, that I’d lived in L.A. for most of my life. So then he comes up with these other conditions.” Jones told Smart that before she left, “I’d have to sign my four kids over to the church. Well, I realized that signing something like that wouldn’t mean anything in court. So I did it. Then he has somebody bring out this gun, and they make me put my hand on it, hold it, and after they had my fingerprints on it they put it in a bag and took it away. The threat was, if I went out and said or did something against Jones or the Temple, the gun could be used in some criminal way and I’d be [implicated].” For a while, Smart’s three youngest children lived with their father, and her nineteen-year-old daughter, Tanitra, lived with her grandmother Kay. All four remained active in the Temple. Smart believed that “at least there, they still were away from the streets and the drugs. Tanitra found a boyfriend in the Temple named Poncho, and of course she always wanted to be with him. So I stayed out and they stayed in.” Jones sometimes used emissaries to try talking defectors into returning, particularly former members who’d been of particular use to the Temple. Garry Lambrev was the first Californian to join the Temple and afterward ran a church antique shop and worked on the staff of The Peoples Forum. Lambrev had an ongoing disagreement with Jones about Lambrev’s desire for a long-term, loving gay relationship, and had left and rejoined the Temple several times. But in 1974, his latest defection seemed that it might last. Lambrev still kept in touch with Temple friends, and

What are you thinking about, Ind?”  I’m thinking about raising kids with the woman next to me. About getting to call my best friend my sister-in-law. About being an aunt to that sweet baby she’s growing. About spending our days together at the United Center watching Ryan or Zanders play then spending our evenings out here. I bring my bottle to my lips. “I’m thinking about how hot I’m going to be as an NBA wife.

The bathroom and the laundry room may be humble, utilitarian spaces, but let me point out a simple fact you may have overlooked: they can also be noble places. If you're cleaning yourself and attending to your own grooming regularly, you're making an effort to present yourself well to the world. If you're taking the time to relax in a bubble bath periodically, you're recognizing that life is not all about activity and achievement and that there are suitable times to de-stress and meditate. If you're monitoring your weight on a scale or taking vitamin supplements kept in your bathroom, you're pursuing the value of health. If you're storing medical supplies that you can grab when a child wakes up sick in the night, you're prepared to bring relief. If you're bathing an infant, or perhaps a disabled spouse or elderly parent, you're giving comfort while serving a basic human need. If you're teaching and modeling a simple approach to health and beauty for your kids, you're helping to start them out well in life. If you're going through the routine of washing your family's clothes week in and week out, they may not thank you but they owe you. Let me say it: thank you for caring and thank you for making the most of these spaces in your house by keeping them tidy and uncluttered.

Part Two: When St. Kari of the Blade Met Darth Vader, Star Wars Dark Lord of the Sith  (Earlier, the Emperor commanded Lord Vader to make contact . . . “I have felt a non-tremor in the Nether-Force” “I have not, my master.” “Yes, well, that is why I’m ‘the Emp’ and you are not . . . Um, we have a new enemy, the non-entity known as Blade Kári. She’s running around all over the place gunning for that brat kid of yours.” “Hmm. Interesting,” tight-lipped Darth. “Anyway, I–hey, how can all this mish-mash be?” “Search your feelings, Lord Vader” the Emperor solemnized. “If you feel nothing as usual, you know it to be true or false. By now your guess is as good as mine with this Force stuff.” “Damn!–If you say so,” Vader said smacking his hand. “If she could be turned she would make a powerful ally.” “Yesss . . . can it be done? Bring the Valkyrie creature to me. See to it personally, Lord Vader. The more she is loose the more of a train wreck waiting to happen she becomes to us. Besides, it will break up the monotony until Bingo Wednesday night.” “Okay. She will join us or die–again and again and again–until we all get it right. “Now, what about my son?” grumbed Vader deeply. “Why fish for guppies when you can land a Megalodon? Go on. Get out of here. You Annoy me.” “Yes, my Mahhster . . . ”). back to the action . . . “—Oh yeah? Who is he, this Vader person? Someone I should meet?” Kari percolated. Luke mulled. “No. He is evil and very powerful. A ȿith lord.” “A Scythian, eh? Humm.—for a minute there, you had me worried. “Look—there he is!” Luke shouted scrunching down and pulling the girl besides him. Vader stwalked down the landing craft’s platform decked in his usual evil attire looking at the pile of messy clones. “He doesn’t look so tough’st to me. Pretty trippy wardrobe though. Maybe that is why he is evil. Clothes do that, costuming up n’ all. I think I’ll go down and see him.” Kari launched off to meet him. Luke trying to pull her back, she running up to the battle line strewn with dead clones. “Hey Darth’st.” “Did you do all this? Hmmph. The Force is with you, young Blade Kári, but you are not a Valkyrie yet.” “Sez ‘st who? You’st? Do not be so blamed melodramatic. This ’tain’t no movie ʎ’know’st, well leastways, not yet. I shall have you know I am a charter member of your friendly neighborhood Valkyrie club and my dues are so in.” Vader ignited his red lightsaber (he was not one for small talk). “Where can I get one of those, she asked Vader, pointing to his glowing blade of laser evil. Do they come in assorted colors? I want one!” she yelled back at Luke. Vader struck savagely at the girl, she mildly pirouetting on her heels to evade the cut then giggling, diminutively popped him squarely in his breather-chest contraption bugging him. Again, he struck, the blade harmlessly passing through her. “Impressive, most impressive. And you say you can’t get a date?” “Best take it easy Sith-meister. You’re riling me.” Luke’s eyes bulged. He could not believe it, remembering his own stupid head words to Yoda, his spry little green master. Vader paused, breathing heavily as was typical of him like he was a 20-pack a day smoker. “Your destiny lies with me, young Kári. Look here, if you really want one of these red glow in the Nether dark cutters, come with me.” “Honestly?” Luke nodded his head back and forth as if agreeing with himself. Where had he heard that before . . . ? The kid was going to be nothing but trouble from here on out he foresaw. end stay tuned for part iii  

Well, Ramón, I must tell you the irony of this entire situation." A smug smile graced Linda's face. "When your father first tried my tacos, do you know what he liked about them?" "He just told me he tried fish tacos during spring break, and that he met a beautiful señorita on the beach. He never said that they were your tacos." She shook her head. "Well, ask him again. And if he still lies, bring him to me---let him lie to my face. Yes, they were my tacos. I had a stand on the beach, and he ordered two tacos and a beer." He'd told Ramón this part of the story many times; he'd just never said that she had been the one to make the tacos. Then again, he had also left out the part about how he had stolen her recipe, if that was true. "He loved the fresh fish." Linda laughed. "No, that was not it at all. Yes, he did love the fish, and he had never had a fish taco. But he loved the fresh salsa. He loved the spicy batter. He loved the handmade tortillas. It's funny to me, because you have absolutely none of those elements left today in your tacos." Linda's words struck Ramón deep in his chest. She was right. Ramón had heard the story so many times. And Papá had always talked about how fresh and delicious all the ingredients were, including the handmade tortillas. Ramón looked at her. "I know. He told me the same thing." Linda placed her hand on Ramón's arm. "Ironic, isn't it? He used to tell me a story about a girlfriend he had in college who had made him an awful taco with canned tomatoes, American cheese, and iceberg lettuce. That her taco was so awful, that he could never marry her. And now, that is exactly the type of taco that you serve in your restaurant." Wow. She was absolutely right. The full reason that Papá had started Taco King was to bring authentic Mexican food to the college kids at San Diego. Somewhere along the line---due to business advisers who'd suggested cutting costs and replacing fresh tomatoes with canned, crumbled queso fresco with American cheese, and handmade tortillas with mass-produced hard shells---Papá had abandoned his vision.

For better or for worse, there are seasons when we hold our faith, and then there are seasons when our faith holds us. In those latter instances, I am more thankful than ever for all the saints, past and present, who said yes and whose faith sustains mine. They believe for me when I’m not sure I believe. They hold on to hope for me when I’ve run out of hope. They are the old lady next to me in the pew and the little kid behind me who recite the entirety of the Apostles’ Creed on my behalf on those Sundays when I cannot bring myself to say all those ancient words wholeheartedly—Is this what I really believe? They pray for me when the only words I have to say to God are words that I refuse to allow to be printed on this page, because they would make even my most foulmouthed friend blush.

Taking a Founder Retreat The two biggest things that have helped me in my journey as a founder are masterminds and founder retreats. Without those, I sincerely don’t think I would be as successful as I have been. My wife Sherry has a PhD in psychology. She started going on annual retreats after we had kids, where she got away for 48 or 72 hours without podcasts, movies, or books—just herself, a notebook, and silent reflection. When she first started taking retreats, it didn’t sound like my thing. I’m always listening to a podcast or an audiobook. I’m constantly working on the next project. But after seeing her come back from these retreats energized and focused, I decided to give it a try. I booked myself a hotel on the coast and drove out for the weekend with no radio, no project, no kids, and no distractions. Over the course of that two-and-a-half-hour drive, things began to settle. I started feeling everything I hadn’t had time to feel for the past year. In the silence, I had sudden realizations because I was finally giving them quiet time to emerge. During that retreat, it became obvious that my whole life had been about entrepreneurship. Ever since I was a kid, I have wanted to start a business. I’ve always been enamored with being an entrepreneur and the excitement of startups. I realized that I was coming to this decision of what to do next because of the idea of wanting to get away from the thing that had caused me to feel bad—as though startups were at fault rather than the decisions I made. At that time, my podcast had more than 400 episodes, which had been recorded over eight years. That wasn’t an accident. It existed because I loved doing it. I showed up every week even though it didn’t generate any revenue. During my retreat, I realized that being involved in the startup space is my life’s work. The podcast, my books and essays, MicroConf—all were part of my legacy. Instead of selling it off and striking out in a new direction, I decided to double down. Within a couple months, I launched TinySeed. Then I leaned into the next stage for MicroConf, where we transitioned from a community built around in-person events to an online and in-person community, plus mastermind matching, virtual events, funding, and mentorship. I also began working on this book. As a founder, it’s important to know yourself. Even if you started out with firm self-knowledge, the fast pace and pressure of bootstrapping a business—not to mention the pressures of the rest of your life—can make it difficult to see your path. A founder retreat is a way to reacquaint yourself with yourself every so often. After my first founder retreat nearly a decade ago, I started going on a retreat every six months. Now I do one a year, and it’s one of the most important things I do for myself, my business, and my family. If you’re considering a retreat, several years ago Sherry wrote an ebook called The Zen Founder Guide to Founder Retreats that explains exactly what questions to ask yourself, the four steps to ensuring you have a successful retreat, the list of tools she recommends bringing along, and how to translate your insights into action for the next year.

The man gave me major stressed-out-dad-regrets-bringing-his-kids-camping energy.

Do you want to have kids?” I ask. “Sometimes,” he says. “When I’m feeling optimistic.” I bump sideways into him, the skin of our arms sticking slightly from the heat. “Does that happen often?” He looks down his shoulder at me with a slight smirk. “Not often, no.” “So the rest of the time,” I say, “when you’re not feeling optimistic, what do you think?” “The rest of the time…” Another long exhale, his eyes straight ahead as we go back to ambling down the block. “The rest of the time, I think, what if the polar ice caps keep melting? What if medical care keeps getting more expensive, and social security runs out, and housing prices keep rising while minimum wage doesn’t, and what if they resent me for bringing them into all of this? “What if they just hate me? Not because of the state of the world, but just because they hate me. Or what if they’re sick? What if they join a cult, and I can’t convince them to come home? What if they start a cult? What if they get into some heinous shit, and I can’t love them anymore—or worse, I keep loving them even though I can’t change anything? “What if there’s another world war? Or what if…what if everything else goes right, but at the end of my life, they’re sitting in hospice with me…” His voice thickens uncharacteristically, wavering just the slightest bit. “And there are things they wish they could say to me, or hear from me, but I don’t remember who I am, let alone who they are. What if they have to care for me, for years, after I’ve stopped calling them by their nicknames or telling them I love them?

Tucker entered the room and sighed. “Maddy’s a hormonal mess. Can’t wait until she pops the kid out and we’re done with that moody shit.” “I think chicks are still moody after they pop them out,” Cooper said, studying me. “Judd thinks Tawny can figure out our mole.” “Is she psychic?” Glancing at Tucker, I smiled. “You haven’t gotten laid in days. You know you did something wrong, but you don’t know what and Maddy won’t tell you. Instead of just asking, you decided she’s hormonal. Maybe you oughta ask and end the suspense, Tuck?” Tucker grinned. “Bring her so we can kill the mole and clean this shit up before Pop decides our balls ain’t big enough to take over.” Cooper sighed. “What about Farah?” Judd chewed on a piece of bacon and glanced at me. “Tell her Tawny is your assistant. Farah knows her sister can read people. If you don’t find the mole soon, it’s going to affect her too.” Leaning back against a desk, Cooper crossed his muscular arms and stared at me. “What did you tell her?” he asked Judd, even though his eyes remained on me. “Nothing.” “Fuck,” Cooper muttered. “Fine, but if there’s trouble, we get her out of the way.” Judd rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t planning on using my woman as a shield, boss. I’d let them shoot you before I let anything happen to her.” Cooper smirked. “I’m glad I never got all stupid and whipped like you are now.” Laughing so hard at his brother’s bullshit, Tucker both farted and burped. Soon, everyone was laughing.

Can I come?” Sawyer asked, appearing from the yard. “We don’t know where we’re going.” “I don’t care. Tuck is bringing the baby over. It’ll cry and everyone will pay attention to it and ignore me.” “I know the feeling of being replaced,” Bailey said, smirking at her sister. “Little kids suck.” Sawyer rolled her eyes and looked at me. “Can I come?” “What do you want to do?” “We could barhop and scope out hot guys.” I frowned at Bailey who shrugged. “I didn’t teach her that.

It’s only an hour later that a servant comes to my room. And when she tells me the duke has invited me out for a horseback ride, I’m flooded with the strangest mix of emotions. I can’t believe that after running off like that, he still wants to hang out. What is going on between us? And why do I want so desperately for it to be something? I shouldn’t want anything. Not with a guy like him. I mean, yeah, I might have been wrong about the illegitimate kid and Lord Brimmon, but the dude still thinks I don’t have opinions or options because I’m a girl. He thinks I have a “place, my place” and that it’s behind a guy. And worse, I keep thinking about our kiss. The part where I bash into the wall in my haste to get away is a particular highlight on the reel I keep playing over and over again in my head. When I walk out the back of the house and he turns to look at me, it’s impossible to fight the burn in my cheeks as he steps up beside me and the horse. I can’t look at him. I’m so embarrassed I stare at the stirrup as if it will take all concentration to get my foot into it. Is he going to say anything? Is he going to apologize for just…kissing me like that? Maybe if he brings it up…Maybe if he apologizes, I can apologize too. For running off. It was so sudden all I could do was react. But he says nothing. He just steps up beside me and gives me a boost. I’m up on the first try and feeling rather proud of myself as I situate my pretty skirts so they drape over my ankles. Until, that is, I see him swing aboard and am reminded of how graceful and easy he makes it look, even when his horse swings away from him when he’s only halfway on. We ride past the stable, and when I glance in, I see one of the stable boys showing the other how to do the robot, his arms stuck out at odd angles, his hands dangling. I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing when I see Alex’s eyebrows shoot up so high they’re nearly to his hairline. It’s nice seeing him caught off-guard. I like it. It makes me want to do something totally crazy, just to see his expression.

Still, whenever someone asks me why I don't want to have kids, I think about how abandoned I feel when my friends get pregnant and that's usually the last little tiny little hint of a feeling that pushes me into the maybe territory - I just want my life to stay the same and keep my friends. Then I remember that losing sleep, picking boogers out of a child's nose, and having said booger maker wake me up every day at five thirty is not worth my bringing a human life into the world just because I could probably mimic the other parent chimps in the wild and manage to raise a kid without killing it.

Don’t think of introversion as something that needs to be cured. If an introverted child needs help with social skills, teach her or recommend training outside class, just as you’d do for a student who needs extra attention in math or reading. But celebrate these kids for who they are. “The typical comment on many children’s report cards is, ‘I wish Molly would talk more in class,’ ” Pat Adams, the former head of the Emerson School for gifted students in Ann Arbor, Michigan, told me. “But here we have an understanding that many kids are introspective. We try to bring them out, but we don’t make it a big deal. We think about introverted kids as having a different learning style

What kind of prick brings draugr out in broad daylight? Maggie demanded. Hold on; I’ll ask. I turned my attention to kid sitting across from me and fixed him with my best annoyed stare. “What kind of a prick brings two draugr out in broad daylight?” I asked.

One grossly overweight young Sergeant I’d put on the PT and Personal Appearance platoon had written a letter complaining to his parents.  They wrote their congressman about how horrible I was treating their son, and we received a “CONGRINT” which stood for Congressional Interest inquiry.  This was a big deal; it got the attention of everyone from headquarters in Washington all the way down to the squadron.       When I showed it to Major Psaros he didn’t even blink.  He said, “Where is this guy?”      “Sir he’s a Sergeant down in radio repair and one hell of a technician.  He’s just a big chunky Italian looking kid and I think he came into the Marine Corps looking like a tub and they slimmed him down in boot camp.  But now he’s just reverted to his natural shape.  I bet his whole family looks just like this.  He’s not going to qualify for reenlistment because of his personal appearance and weight.  He’s one of the most productive technicians, but if he had to saddle up and go into combat I think he’d be a liability.”      “Get his ass up here and let me see what he looks like.”      I brought the Sergeant up to the CO’s office.  The Major took one look at him and said, “Marine, you look like a Technicolor Sea Bag in your uniform.  You’re fat and out of shape.  I’ll give you a month to start showing some major improvements or your career as a Marine will be coming to an end.”      After the Sergeant left Major Psaros told me to take a picture of him in his skivvies, front and side and bring him copies of all the appropriate Marine Corps orders on personal appearance and weight control.      The CO answered the CONGRINT with the pictures of the Sergeant in his skivvies and the copies of the orders.  He didn’t include anything else.  We never heard another word.

The only sounds at the late hour were the faint jingle of a phone ringing in the nurses’ station, the ping of an elevator, the faraway sound of the wheels of a cart, and the gentle beep of Brandon’s vital signs monitor. They wouldn’t allow any flowers or personal items in the ICU, but Sloan had snuck in an engagement photo. It sat on the table next to the bed. Her and Brandon on the beach, the surf crashing around their feet, her tattooed arm over his shoulder, them looking at each other. Both of them laughing. I looked back at him and sighed. “You’re going to have some gnarly scars, buddy.” They’d started the skin grafts for the road rash on his arm. “But you’ll get to do everything you planned to do with your life. One of us is going to get the girl. I’ll help you any way I can. Even if I have to wheel your ass to the altar.” I could picture his smile. With any luck I’d see it in a few hours. A knock on the door frame turned me around in my chair. “Hey, cutie.” Valerie came into the room for her vitals check. She turned the lights up, and I stood and stretched. As if sleeping in a chair wasn’t hard enough, the activity every two hours was the final kicker. I wouldn’t call anything I did on these overnight shifts sleeping. Maybe napping, but not sleeping. Every two hours Brandon was moved. They checked his airways, changed out bags, looked at his vitals. I don’t know how Sloan was handling doing this almost nightly for the last three weeks. Sloan was a good woman. I’d always liked her, but now she’d earned my respect, and I was grateful Brandon and Kristen had her. “Did you decide what day you want to bring the kids to the station?” I asked Valerie, yawning. She cycled the blood pressure cuff on Brandon’s arm and smiled. “I’m thinking Tuesday. You on shift Tuesday?” “Yup.” She wrote down some notes on Brandon’s chart and then gave me a raised eyebrow. “Any updates with your lady friend?” I laughed a little. “No.” The whole nursing staff knew about my depressing love life. I’d gotten hit on a few too many times by some of the younger nurses. I couldn’t claim to have a girlfriend, and I wasn’t married, so it was either “I’m gay” or “I’m in love with that girl over there.” I’d gone with the latter, and now I wished I’d said I was gay. They didn’t know why Kristen wouldn’t date me, just that she wouldn’t. It had turned into the favorite topic of the ICU. A real-life episode of Grey’s Anatomy. I rarely got through a Brandon visit without it coming up. The drama escalated when Kristen had been hit on by the nurses’ favorite single orthopedic surgeon. According to the nurses’ gossip circuit, Kristen told him to go fuck himself. And apparently she’d actually said, “Go fuck yourself.” After that everyone was sure she was holding out for me. Only I knew better.

All of us kids walked home for lunch, anxious to see our moms and grandmas. Lunch would be waiting and the television, which I so loved, was always set to “The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show.” When he signed off with “God bless your pea-picking hearts!” I was out the door and back to my friends for the walk back to school. A better place to raise a family could never have been found. The milkman delivered quite a few quart glass bottles with the cream for coffee floating on top. A Wonder Bread delivery man lived next door. He delivered only to stores, but would bring us cute miniature loaves of bread once in a while. The scissors and knife sharpener man made his rounds. Grandma loved to work with sharp scissors and admonished us, “Don’t ever cut paper with my shears, it dulls the blades.” I felt sorry for the poor Fuller Brush man since my Mom never would buy anything, but she’d take the free samples. Maybe he just liked talking to my Mom who loved to talk. My favorite was the Good Humor ice cream truck, of course.

I have clients that feel like family, I make far more money than I've got a right to, considering the workload, and I have amazing benefits. What could be bad?" "I suppose I meant if you are satisfied creatively." I'd never really thought about that. The Farbers give me free rein, but they have a repertoire of my dishes that they love and want to have regularly in the rotation, and everything has to be kid friendly; even if we are talking about kids with precocious tastes, they are still kids. Lawrence is easy: breakfasts, lunches, and healthy snacks for his days; he eats most dinners out with friends, or stays home with red wine and popcorn, swearing that Olivia Pope stole the idea from him. And I'm also in charge of home-cooked meals for Philippe and Liagre, his corgis, who like ground chicken and rice with carrots, and home-baked peanut butter dog biscuits. Simca was a gift from him, four years ago. She was a post-Christmas rescue puppy, one of those gifts that a family was unprepared for, who got left at a local shelter where Lawrence volunteers. He couldn't resist her, but knew that Philippe and Liagre barely tolerate each other, and he couldn't imagine bringing a female of any species into their manly abode. Luckiest thing that ever happened to me, frankly. She's the best pup ever. I named her Simca because it was Julia Child's nickname for her coauthor Simone Beck. She is, as the other Eloise, my own namesake, would say, my mostly companion. Lawrence's dinner parties are fun to do- he always has a cool group of interesting people, occasionally famous ones- but he is pretty old-school, so there isn't a ton of creativity in those menus, lots of chateaubriand and poached salmon with the usual canapés and accompaniments.

You’ve probably been multitasking for years now, which means you’re wired to do it. Changing a well-established habit isn’t easy, so let’s not make it any harder than it already is. Practicing any skill when we’re not under pressure will make it far more likely that we’ll be able to utilize that skill when the heat is on. To that end, pick one or two activities you do every day that you enjoy (or at least don’t despise), and just do those things. It may be drinking your coffee or tea, reading the morning paper, walking from the train to the office, or waiting in the school pickup line. Turn off the radio or TV, put away your phone, and each time you notice your thoughts wandering, bring your attention back to what you’re doing. For me, it’s showering and reading to my kids. If I don’t make a point to stay present, I get to the end of my shower, and my hair is wet but I have no idea if I’ve washed it. And as for the reading thing, well, I don’t mean to brag or anything, but I can read an entire book out loud to my daughters while simultaneously dissecting a weird interaction with a friend or wondering if I remembered to nag my husband about the kitty litter or, you know, doubting my entire career path and life trajectory. So, that’s fun. EXCEPT IT’S TOTALLY NOT, and by the time we get to the end of the book, I’m a ball of stress and self-doubt and my buttons are huge and bright and red, and I totally freak out at my kids when all they did was ask for another story.

God takes everyone he loves through a desert. It is his cure for our wandering hearts, restlessly searching for a new Eden. Here’s how it works. The first thing that happens is we slowly give up the fight. Our wills are broken by the reality of our circumstances. The things that brought us life gradually die. Our idols die for lack of food. That is what happened to Emily in Guatemala. That is what happened to Jill with Kim. The still, dry air of the desert brings the sense of helplessness that is so crucial to the spirit of prayer. You come face-to-face with your inability to live, to have joy, to do anything of lasting worth. Life is crushing you. Suffering burns away the false selves created by cynicism or pride or lust. You stop caring about what people think of you. The desert is God’s best hope for the creation of an authentic self. Desert life sanctifies you. You have no idea you are changing. You simply notice after you’ve been in the desert awhile that you are different. Things that used to be important no longer matter. For instance, before Kim was born, we used to have one of the kids comb the fringes of the living-room rug so it was perfect. Now we are lucky to find a comb for our own hair. After a while you notice your real thirsts. While in the desert David writes, O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. PSALM 63:1 The desert becomes a window to the heart of God. He finally gets your attention because he’s the only game in town. You cry out to God so long and so often that a channel begins to open up between you and God. When driving, you turn off the radio just to be with God. At night you drift in and out of prayer when you are sleeping. Without realizing it, you have learned to pray continuously. The clear, fresh water of God’s presence that you discover in the desert becomes a well inside your own heart. The best gift of the desert is God’s presence. We see this in Psalm 23. In the beginning of the psalm, the Shepherd is in front of me—“he leads me beside still waters” (verse 2); at the end he is behind me—“goodness and faithful love will pursue me” (verse 6, HCSB); but in the middle, as I go through “the valley of the shadow of death,” he is next to me—“I will fear no evil, for you are with me” (verse 4). The protective love of the Shepherd gives me the courage to face the interior journey. YOU CRY OUT TO GOD SO LONG AND SO OFTEN THAT A CHANNEL BEGINS TO OPEN UP BETWEEN YOU AND GOD.

The sun starts to sink lower over the ocean, and Zach somehow magics up a fire from driftwood and kindling. And then he brings out the marshmallows. Not a bag of mass-produced, uniform white cylinders of sugar. But two not-quite-square, hand-made, artisanal marshmallows. I look up at him. “Are you kidding me right now?” The right side of his mouth kicks up in a smirk that says I gave him exactly the reaction he was looking for. “Nope,” he says. “I asked the baker and she made these special for us. After all, I did promise you.” He grabs a forked stick and roasts them for us. When they’re perfectly golden brown and sagging off the stick, he slides it onto a graham cracker, and adds a square of chocolate. I put the entire thing in my mouth. “Ohmigod!” I murmur. “This is amazing!” “Transcendent?” he teases. “Absolutely.” I agree, licking some of the sugar off my fingers. He grabs my wrist and the next thing I know, he’s licking the sugar off my fingers. Oh God, and now I’m thinking of last night and what else he licked. As I watch, his eyes get intense; he’s thinking the same. “We can’t have sex on the beach,” I say breathlessly. “Too sandy.” “You have a one-track mind, don’t you?” he teases. “I only brought you here for the sunset.” Aaaand now I feel like an idiot. “Right,” I cough, blushing. “Well, thank you.” “But …” He adds, his mouth curving into that sexy smile that kills me. “That doesn’t mean we can’t … kiss.” His hand comes up to push a stray lock of hair behind my ear. I nod because resistance is futile. The best I can do is make light of it so he can’t see the emotion coursing through me. “I’m pretty sure it’s the law that when you drink wine and eat artisanal marshmallows on the beach, you have to kiss.” I wave vaguely toward where we left the car. “I saw it on the sign by the parking lot.” “Well, if it’s a law,” he grins. A second later, his lips find mine. He tastes like wine and sugar, and pure Zach. I sigh in pleasure. This picnic, the marshmallows—everything—just might be the most romantic thing anyone’s ever done for me. But that perfect sunset? We totally miss it. After all, there are better things to do.

Being a working mother back then was to be a double-agent; you lied for a living. A male colleague who announced he was off to his son's rugby match was a hero; a women who did exactly the same was Lacking in Commitment... In the end, what made me quit EMF was the thought that my kids were suffering from the punishingly long - unnecessarily long, stupidly, inhumanely long - hours I spent away from them. They needed me, yes, but it turned out I needed them too. And our family was running on empty and the only person who could fill that emptiness was me. ... Winter. It must have been because all the commuting fathers, who had come straight from the station, were hurrying in with their thick dark coats and their briefcases. Each man stopped to ask me where they might find their child's classroom, They knew the name if their kid - he, credit where it's due! - but generally, that was the limit of their knowledge. They didn't know who the child's teacher was, sometimes didn't know what year group they were in. They had no clue where the little coats and bags were hung up, or what was in those bags. And I stood there in that cold, dark playground thinking, how could this ever possibly be fair? How could a woman compete when men were allowed to be so oblivious? One parent not knowing who the teacher was, not knowing what went in the lunchbox, not knowing which child in the class had the nut allergy, not knowing where the PE bag was, or which stinky little socks needed washing. OK, one parent could be oblivious. But not two. One parent has to carry the puzzle of family life in their head, and mostly, let's face it, it's still the mum. Professionally, back then I was competing with men whose minds were clear of all the stuff that small children bring.

Knox: Yo. Oh wow . . . how prolific. I chuckle, wondering what I was thinking, as if he was going to open with recited poetry or something. He is a “horny college student” after all—his words, not mine. Shaking my head, I type back. Emory: You have one chance to make a good first impression in student chat and you open with yo? I expected more from you. Knox: I wasn’t going to waste a good opening on the possibility of you not accepting my chat. Emory: Does that mean you have a secondary opening? Knox: Obviously. Emory: Do I get to read it? Knox: I don’t know. I’m trying to decide if you’re worthy or not. Emory: You’re the one who messaged me. I can sign out anytime I want. Knox: You’re fucking brutal. Fine . . . ahem, here it goes; What’s up? I laugh out loud, hating that he so easily entertains me. What a doofus. Emory: Wow, I think you just blew my socks off. Knox: See why I saved it? Can’t waste that shit on just anyone. Emory: I hope you keep that opening a secret. Can you imagine the number of socks that would be flying off feet all over campus? It’s dangerous. Knox: Lethal. Emory: I’m glad you saved it for me. I’m indebted to you. Knox: Really? ((Rubs hands together)) Should I cash in now? Emory: I’m clearly kidding. Knox: Nope, I have it in writing ^^^ right up there. You’re indebted to me. So I’m cashing in. Emory: “Cash in” all you want, still doesn’t mean I’m going to do whatever you ask. Knox: Stubborn woman. Emory: ^^That’s winning you friends. Knox: Come to the party tonight. Emory: Just jumping right into it, are you? Knox: There is no theme. It’s just to have fun. We have beer and some mixed drinks, and I can even offer you some pretzels. Emory: Wow, you paint a beautiful evening. The pretzels are a real winning attribute. Knox: I was going to save this as a last-ditch effort but since I think I might have you hooked with the pretzels, I’m going to bring my offer home and let you in on a little secret; just bought a fresh packet of Oreos. So if you play your cards right, you could be separating Oreos with me tonight. Emory: Seriously? Oreos, how RARE! Well, then I must go because . . . Oreos. Knox: Really? You’re coming? Emory: No. Have a good night, Knox. I shut the computer before he can respond and smile to myself as I look over to my closet, debating what I should wear tonight.

I love you, too," he said. "I've loved you since the first second I saw you." Adrienne tried to speak but the noise she made sounded like water trying to pass through a clogged drain. What was he saying? Finally, she managed a whisper. "You mean, in the parking lot?" "My heart fell on its knees in front of you. I thought maybe I could wait tables. Someone told me it was a piece of cake. Your purple jacket. Your rosy cheeks. And then you inhaled that breakfast like you hadn't eaten in three days. My heart was prostrate at your feet." "You're kidding." "I've loved you since that very first morning." "I don't believe you." "You can ask Fiona," Thatcher said. "After you left I went back into the kitchen and told Fiona that I had fallen in love with a woman named Adrienne Dealey and that everyone else would fall in love with her, too." "You said that to Fiona?" "I did." Adrienne thought back to her first conversation with Fiona when Adrienne told her the Parrishes wanted her to bring their bread. Thatcher was right about you, then. Right about me how? I mean, what did he say... "Caren loves you. The Parrishes. Mario. Mario wanted to ask you out and I told him if he did, I would fire him. He didn't speak to me for three days.

Principal Hansberry came to each of our classrooms that afternoon to talk to us about discipline and wasting food and respecting the cafeteria workers. I was really worried that Danny would be suspended for starting the food fight. He’d only been helping me. If he got in trouble, I’d have to come clean and take his punishment instead. But the principal had decided that this was “first-week high spirits.” Instead of singling out anyone for punishment, she made the whole school use the last hour of the day to help clean up the cafeteria. That was the first time we’d been punished like that for a food fight. We all got to see what a huge gross mess we had left behind. Lots of kids complained that they hadn’t thrown any food, but Principal Hansberry said that since making the mess was a “group effort,” cleaning it up should be, too. Plus we all had to write a note to take home that said, “Dear Mom and Dad, I am sorry if I have ketchup or anything on my clothes today. We were involved in a food fight at lunch, and we feel very bad for causing so much trouble. Please accept my apology for the extra laundry.” Personally, I thought this was kind of a funny note. But we had to bring it back signed by our parents, so a lot of people didn’t think it was so funny. Luckily they weren’t mad at me or Danny, though. Except for Avery. He tried to get Danny in trouble by telling Principal Hansberry who’d started the fight. But she told him that wasn’t necessary. She said everyone was “responsible for the mob mentality we saw here today,” whatever that means. The most amazing part was that nobody said anything about Merlin. I guess a lot of people didn’t see him. But even the ones who did didn’t admit it. Vice Principal Taney came into our class and asked: “Did anyone here see a dog in the cafeteria before or during the food fight?” No one raised their hands. After a minute, Heidi said: “Maybe you imagined it, Mr. Taney,” in this really innocent voice. I was worried that Avery would tell, but later Hugo told me that nobody in Mr. Guare’s class answered Mr. Taney’s question either. I don’t know why Avery didn’t say anything. Maybe he already knew everyone was mad at him for snitching on Danny.

Gather two or more toys or balls. Toss one toy, saying “Fetch” or “Go Get It!” and cheering your puppy on as they race towards their toy. If they turn to you with the ball, say “Good puppy,” but then produce and play with another similar or identical toy as you race away in the opposite direction, saying “Can’t catch me.” If your puppy chases you with the toy, say “Bring,” but don’t demand that they drop the toy at your feet. Puppies, like kids, have to learn to share. If your puppy ends up at your feet with the toy in their mouth, just ignore them as you play with your object. When and if they spit out their toy, say “Give,” requiring that your puppy hold still on all four paws before you toss the toy you’re holding. Now pick up the first toy and start the game over from the top. Play three to five times, and then quit before your puppy loses interest.

Step Four: Ideal-Week Planning Now you need to take your “only I can do” list and actually plot out how you will get all these things done. I hope your to-do list is shorter than when you picked up this book. If so, that reduction is a massive win in itself. The goal is to schedule all these things out. Literally, go through the list, plot each item into your calendar, and create an automated repeating appointment so it shows up in your calendar on a weekly basis. For example, if only you can write a weekly blog post and you know you need about three hours to write and publish a post, create a three-hour appointment in your calendar from ten to one o’clock on Mondays, for example, and then make it a recurring appointment. The same process can be followed for child-related activities. If you are the person who primarily picks up your kids from school, put an appointment in your calendar for the amount of time it takes to drive or walk to the school, pick them up, and return home. Repeat this task for all the activities you have on the only-you list. Once you’ve entered these activities, you may be thinking, Okay, Lisa, that’s great, but I have now run out of time. So what happens if you actually block everything in and you run out of hours in the week? If I were sitting across from you in a private coaching session, this is what I would ask: •Are all the activities in your calendar truly things only you can do? Is there anything that could be delegated to someone else? •Can any of these activities be batched with something else? For example, could you do research for a blog post on your phone while you run on the treadmill? Can you do phone calls on your commute home or while grocery shopping for your family? •Is everything in your calendar actually aligned with your ideal life plan? Is there anything on the list that is no longer supporting this plan? Be honest with yourself about things that need to go—even if you are having a hard time letting go. •Can you reduce the amount of time it takes to do an activity? This might seem like an incredibly overwhelming exercise, but trust me, it is an incredibly worthwhile exercise. It might seem rigid to schedule everything in your life, but scheduling brings the freedom not to worry about how you are spending your time. You have thought it through, and you know that every worthwhile activity has been accounted for. This system, my friend, is the cure to mom guilt. When you know you have appropriately scheduled dedicated time for your children, your spouse, yourself, and your work, what do you have to feel guilty about?

Did you know that shooting stars are made when stars die?' Mina asked. 'Really? I thought they were stars going on a trip.' 'No, they shine so beautifully because they get pulled in by Earth's gravity and burn up when they reach the atmosphere.' 'You're kidding me.' 'So, while we're watching them thinking how beautiful they are, they're literally burning up and dying.' 'Like matches that look most beautiful the moment before they burn out.' 'Did you know that it was the comets that brought the elements to Earth that created life? Comets are made of ice, and a gigantic one struck the Earth when it was just forming, and that made the oceans.' 'So, does that mean that part of us is in the Giacobini comet? ...How would we ever know?' 'I learned all this from the library books you borrowed, Tomoko. You're like a comet that brings books. But tell me, what are you going to wish for? When you see the shooting stars.

Excuse me,” a voice says, interrupting us. I turn, and a blonde woman smiles at me. “You’re Maverick Miller, aren’t you?” “Depends. Did I do something wrong?” “No.” She flashes me a flirty smirk. “But I’m hoping you’re in the mood to be a little bad. My friends are leaving, and it’s too early for me to call it a night. Want to come back to my place?” “Sorry,” I tell the blonde with a grin. “I’m kind of in the middle of something with my baby’s mother right now. The kid is half alien, half potato, and we’re trying to figure out where they got these genes from.” “Ooookay,” the woman says, and she wrinkles her eyebrows. “That’s weird. I didn’t know you had kids.” “Are we classifying tiny extraterrestrials as kids? I guess we should. It’s inclusive and better than calling them skin dogs—since we all call dogs fur babies, you know?—or something like that.” I point my thumb over my shoulder. “I better get back to it. Janet here thinks the UFO has her eyes, but I’m pretty sure he looks most like me.” “I’m so confused,” the woman tells me. “You’re not Maverick Miller, are you?” “No way. That guy is way better at hockey than me. All I bring to the table are alien children.” “Don’t forget the potato part,” Emerson adds, and I almost lose it.

Determined and defiant, looking wild and provoked, Kris kept her gaze locked on April. “Dad knew about this town, its people; the ghosts. Leaving the ghosts would be like leaving your kids behind. Mom and Dad wouldn’t leave kids behind.” “Yeah, they would. They did. They’re dead,” April clucked like one of the tin clickers in the “Jeopardy!” board game she despised, the tsk of her tongue punctuating the obvious. “And we’re trying to figure out the best way forward. And you’re talking about ghosts and who knows what the fuck else. There’s no talking to you because you never make sense.” “That’s because you don’t know how to listen.” Gooch pulled another guest register out from an old melon crate, dismissing his sister’s tirade. “She’s saying our family has deep roots in this town. Deep roots. An attachment. Things we love are here. There is a reason for living. Living here.” “Mona and Baby Lilly. Mom and Dad. Oh-Me-san and Papa-san. We can’t just leave them. The ghosts need us.” Ghosts were never far from Kris’s mind and it was a topic that often drew her out of her shell. For as long as Gooch could remember, Kris talked of ghosts with Gramps whenever she could. “All them ghosts gonna get apocalyptical on us,” Gramps said that day long ago, as Kris wiped silicon on a part where a new gasket would set. “My two. Emma Crawford roamin all over. Them ghosts see things ain’t goin the way they spose to, then go to town on people.” Kris fitted felt over the piece she’d just greased, lining up bolt holes with her popped eye and screwed up face. “Ghosts don’t care what’s going on in the town. They just want to be talked to and treated like everyone else. Not special or anything, just given the time of day.” Gooch was seven when he heard his sister and Gramps talk so openly about ghosts, as though such things were nothing more than chickens in the yard. Kris smeared and fitted, twirling nuts, ratcheting, fingers and wrists working her magic for bringing machines back to life. Her innate ease with the physical and metaphysical was the primary reason he believed her mind existed on some undefined plane beyond normal comprehension. Gooch was certain Kris’s genius placed her within an esteemed place.

afraid that is quite out of the question,” Mrs Jacobs said. “I’ll need to be out of the country for several weeks, and you’re too young to look after yourselves. How would you like to go to the Carl Kristie Kids’ Camp?” “They were fully booked months ago, Mum,” said Lara, “Daisy couldn’t get in this year either. Rufus is banned from going back anyway, remember?” “Oh yes,” said Mrs Jacobs, frowning as she recollected the call she received from Carl Kristie himself two summers ago to say that Rufus had stolen a rowing boat, pretending to commandeer a pirate ship. He had drifted far out into the lake, without any oars. All activities had to be stopped until two camp counsellors could drive out in a speedboat to bring him back to the shore. Even after Mrs Jacobs had driven him back to his grandparents’ house, Rufus had talked in a pirate accent for several days. “Ahoy me mateys!” cried Rufus, suddenly struck by the same memory. Lara put her head in her hands. “Well, plan B it is then,” said Mrs Jacobs. “You’ll be going to your great-uncle Herb’s.

Hate is illogical by nature. And it is in my nature to hate mushrooms. Always has been. From the time I was a kid, and my mom tried to make me eat those shitty white button mushrooms or whatever the fuck they are called, I have despised them. They bring nothing good to the world, and their only use is when they are destroyed and their juices are squeezed out to kill things. Because even in death, mushrooms bring only suffering.

As I turned to leave the podium, I caught Simpson out of the corner of my eye. He was shifting in his seat, his face contorted with—what was it? Rage? Frustration? Disbelief? His lawyers had probably told him that he had a good shot at making bail. And here I’d gone bringing up all that Bronco business. Being at the mercy of a woman had to be O. J. Simpson’s personal idea of hell. That gave me at least a moment of satisfaction. But as so often happened in TFC, even my smallest triumphs were short-lived. Johnnie did an end run around me, announcing that his client wanted to “address the court.” If the defendant has counsel there to speak for him, he shouldn’t be allowed to speak directly to the court unless he’s prepared to take the witness stand. I started to object, but it was too late. Lance had granted the request. “How do you feel?” he inquired amiably of Simpson, who now stood, hands clasped in front of him, the very picture of wounded virtue. How did he feel? “Well,” he complained, “I feel I’ve been attacked here today.” Attacked? Does he not get it that he’s the defendant in a double homicide? “I’m an innocent man,” he continued. “I want to get to the jury… . I want to get it over with as soon as I can. I have two young kids out there. That’s my only concern… . I’ve got two young kids out there that don’t have a mother… .” It disgusted me to the point of nausea to hear this man use his children this way. And then Simpson turned toward me. I didn’t meet his eyes—not because I was intimidated by him; I just didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he had my attention.

We might just need to slow our pace. Maybe we put the phone down, play with the kids, read a book, go on a walk, play cards, dance, draw, hang out with friends, or simply sit with Jesus. These are what green pastures and calm waters look like to me. They bring me into His presence and give me strength.

The next afternoon we got a studio car to take us up to the pool at the inn. We were like kids—Duke was 41, Pete 36, and I was 27. We splashed one another, pushed one another under water, and shoved one another off the diving board. We had a hell of a time, laughing and talking about all the crises during the shooting. In those days, everybody smoked. You were either odd or in training, if you didn’t. But Duke! He lit one Camel off another all day long. We used to raise hell with him about it. “You’re not patting me down already? It’s only ten-thirty in the morning, and you’re already out?” He’d start toward, you patting the pockets on his vest or pants with a big grin on his face, trying to make you think he’d forgotten his. “Hell-ooo, Ol’ Dobe,” he’d say. Then he’d start searching you like a detective looking for dope in one of today’s TV shows. When I’d give him one, he’d say, “Jesus, how can you smoke these (meaning the brand) goddamn things? I’ll give you a pack tomorrow.” He never did so, but I found a remedy for that problem. One day I was passing his dressing room—the kind that is on coasters and is on the sound stage. The door was open, and I looked in. He wasn’t there, but his cigarettes were! Right there on his dressing room table were five cartons of Camels. He’d posed for an ad for them. I just took a carton to my own dressing room, and then, when he wanted a cigarette, I gave him one of his own! He finally said, “Ya’ finally learned to smoke the best cigarette!” The reason I bring all this up is because I thought I was some sort of champ at staying underwater a long time. I figured that because of the way Duke smoked and the fact that his only exercise was playing cards, I could easily beat him swimming underwater. So, as we were splashing around, I said to Duke, “I’ll bet I can swim underwater in this pool longer than you can.” “What? Hah—hah—hah. You have ta’ be kiddin,’ friend! You are on!" I really did think I could beat him; after all, I was younger, and I exercised a lot more than he did. I played golf and tennis, and rode horseback. It was a very big pool. My turn first. I swam up and back twice and then another half. I ran out of air and surfaced. “Not too bad, for a skinny guy,” he commented and jumped in. He then went almost twice as far! I couldn’t believe it! He didn’t razz me or brag—he just knew what he could do. It never occurred to me that his lung capacity was over twice mine and that he’d been diving for abalone off Catalina Island for years.

He slid a pullover dress on me, cleaned me with the towel, and helped me into a clean pair of panties. “Jasir, I don’t think I need those.” “Girl, you not about to let my babies fall out and hit the floor.” His expression had me wanting to laugh so bad, but I was in too much pain to do any of that. Once I had our kids, I definitely was going to bring that back up. I grabbed his arm because another contraction was coming in, much stronger than the last one.

people used to come to Shirley House late at night and collect girls, then bring them back in the morning. They weren’t factory workers or dustmen or shop staff. They were rich, middle-aged businessmen. Lawyers. Even senior coppers. All us kids knew what went on. So if you’re asking me was Mark Swift a rapist? I don’t know. But it wouldn’t surprise me. That sort think their money gives them a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Americans are Americans and everyone else is sorry. Half the time we don't even know what we're sorry about, it just squeaks out of our sorry gaps before we've even clues into the conversation. Well, I'm sorry YOU'RE all so sorry. You have to know when to be sorry. You can't really be sorry for something you don't want to remember, can you? Selective memory, isn't it? Let's be honest, hell, you can't even apologize for the shit you did yesterday never mind fifty years ago. Indian residential schools, Japanese internment camps, hell, and this is just in your neighborhood. But it's all right... everybody's sorry these days. The politicians are sorry, the cops are sorry, the priests are sorry, the logging companies are sorry, mining companies, electric companies, water companies, wife beaters, serial rapists, child molesters, mommy and daddy. Everybody's sorry. Everybody's sorry they got caught sticking it to someone else... that's what they are sorry about... getting caught. They could give a rat's ass about you, or me, or the people they are saying sorry to. Think about it... Don't be a sorry ass, be sorry before you have to say you are sorry. Be sorry for even thinking about, bringing about something sorry-filled. And the next time someone says, "There is one law for everyone." Say, "I'm sorry, you're an idiot." Just kidding, now that was harsh.

Gamache put his glass down. The condensation made his fingers slightly wet. Or was it the sweat that had suddenly appeared on his palms? The noises of the storm, the rain and hail pounding frantically on the window, the conversation and laughter inside the bistro receded. He leaned forward and spoke, his voice low. ‘Can you give me an example?’ ‘There are three couplings,’ said Myrna, herself leaning forward now, and whispering though she didn’t know why. ‘Attachment masquerades as Love, Pity as Compassion and Indifference as Equanimity.’ Armand Gamache was quiet for a moment, looking into Myrna’s eyes, trying to divine from them the deeper meaning of what she’d just said. There was a deeper meaning, he knew it. Something important had just been said. But he hadn’t understood it fully. His eyes drifted to the fireplace while Myrna leaned back in her overstuffed chair and swirled her red wine in its bulbous glass. ‘I don’t understand,’ Gamache said finally, bringing his eyes back to Myrna. ‘Can you explain?’ Myrna nodded. ‘Pity and compassion are the easiest to understand. Compassion involves empathy. You see the stricken person as an equal. Pity doesn’t. If you pity someone you feel superior.’ ‘But it’s hard to tell one from the other,’ Gamache nodded. ‘Exactly. Even for the person feeling it. Almost everyone would claim to be full of compassion. It’s one of the noble emotions. But really, it’s pity they feel.’ ‘So pity is the near enemy of compassion,’ said Gamache slowly, mulling it over. ‘That’s right. It looks like compassion, acts like compassion, but is actually the opposite of it. And as long as pity’s in place there’s not room for compassion. It destroys, squeezes out, the nobler emotion.’ ‘Because we fool ourselves into believing we’re feeling one, when we’re actually feeling the other.’ ‘Fool ourselves, and fool others,’ said Myrna. ‘And love and attachment?’ asked Gamache. ‘Mothers and children are classic examples. Some mothers see their job as preparing their kids to live in the big old world. To be independent, to marry and have children of their own. To live wherever they choose and do what makes them happy. That’s love. Others, and we all see them, cling to their children. Move to the same city, the same neighborhood. Live through them. Stifle them. Manipulate, use guilt-trips, cripple them.’ ‘Cripple them? How?’ ‘By not teaching them to be independent.’ ‘But it’s not just mothers and children,’ said Gamache. ‘No. It’s friendships, marriages. Any intimate relationship. Love wants the best for others. Attachment takes hostages.

Labeling involves attaching negative labels to ourselves or others based on isolated incidents. Example: You get a call about an incident at school and think, “He’s such a bad kid. I’m a failure as a parent.” Helpful Reframe: “He’s having a hard day. I’m a good parent, and I’m doing the best I can.” Catastrophizing involves blowing situations out of proportion and assuming the worst possible outcome. Example: “If she doesn’t get sorted out, she’ll end up in jail someday.” Helpful Reframe: “I’m supporting her with positive changes day by day and she’ll probably turn out just fine.” Personalization involves taking responsibility for events outside your control. Example: “This is all my fault.” Helpful Reframe: “I’m not responsible for his behavior. Sometimes, even if I do everything right, things can still go wrong.” All-or-nothing thinking involves viewing situations in extremes, with no room for nuance. Example: “My child hates me.” Helpful Reframe: “He’s triggered and saying hurtful things, but I know he loves me.” Rejecting Reality involves refusing to accept facts or evidence that contradicts negative beliefs. Example: “He should be able to focus on his homework.

It is damned, that house. It’s a greedy house. It takes. You said once, Col, that it would bring out the best in whoever lived there. You were wrong. It takes the best. It took that miserable Pie’s kid, and her marriage, and her daddy. It took that poor sonofabitch Buddy’s whole future. It took that Abbott guy’s future. It’s taking Anita Sheehan’s sanity—I know damned well there was more to her little ‘setback’ than you told me, Col—and it took my talent. And tonight it almost took you and Walter away from each other for good. Don’t you see that? Don’t either of you see that?

And so what I had to distinguish to get to the bottom of women taking men down, which after it was pointed out to me and I got that as long as I was taking men’s power I would never know my own. I could see that every time I took a man’s power, I’d have a moment of glee, but it just reinforced my own sense of weakness - that I did not have enough power to deal head on, to be honest, let alone be in a partnership. Are you kidding me? And so when I laid down my sword, I was stunned, because I set out to learn how I was bringing out the worst in men and maybe how I could bring the best in men. And when I just stopped attacking - just stopped. Every time I was triggered, I just sat down with a grenade… And I just set it down. I didn’t attack no matter how hard I was provoked. And I was stunned at who men became around me. I wasn’t doing anything nice, I just wasn’t being mean anymore. That was the beginning, I called it the transformation of the castration club. I’d find out what triggered a woman to emasculate a man. What was her trigger? And then I’d find out how they did it. So how did they attack his power? Try to take his power, undermine him, take the wind out of his sails. And then most importantly is how they justified having done that. We don’t ask women to stop emasculating men. It’s a response. It’s a fear and frustration, it’s a reaction to fear and frustration, sometimes terror, a lifetime of terror, and this terrible fear that if men have power, obviously you’re going to use it against us. I was 16 years old when I decided men are bigger and stronger and they’ll hurt me. And I adopted that the best defence is a good offense. Hand me your balls and then we’ll talk. And I used everything. I used my sexuality. I used my intellect. I used my sense of humour. I used everything to protect myself from men. But I didn’t know I was doing it. What we ask women to do is to give up the right because women believe they have the right that anything any man has done that’s bad gives us the right to emasculate all of you. Anytime a man uses his power against us it gives us the right to take every man’s power. It’s hideous. And guys you can become impervious to this. That’s my message if you look the dragon in the eyes and see how terrified she is, you can lean into it. And – and we’re terrified.