Cap Girl Quotes

Here's to bottle caps,the Yankees, and 'birds', and most of all"...he paused and lowered his voice to a whisper.." and,most of all to a beautiful girl named Molly who refuses to believe the man-the man who loves her more than she'll ever know

THAT crazed girl improvising her music. Her poetry, dancing upon the shore, Her soul in division from itself Climbing, falling She knew not where, Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship, Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing Heroically lost, heroically found. No matter what disaster occurred She stood in desperate music wound, Wound, wound, and she made in her triumph Where the bales and the baskets lay No common intelligible sound But sang, 'O sea-starved, hungry sea

Slowly, she turned to him. It was her face—or it would be in a few years. When she Settled. But it wasn’t the slightly older features that knocked the breath from him. It was the hand on her rounded belly. She stared toward him, hair still flowing. Behind her, four small figures emerged. Rowan fell to his knees. The tallest: a girl with golden hair and pine-green eyes, solemn-faced and as proud as her mother. The boy beside her, nearly her height, smiled at him, warm and bright, his Ashryver eyes near-glowing beneath his cap of silver hair. The boy next to him, silver-haired and green-eyed, might as well have been Rowan’s twin. And the smallest girl, clinging to her mother’s legs … A fine-boned, silver-haired child, little more than a babe, her blue eyes harking back to a lineage he did not know. Children. His children. Their children. With another mere weeks from being born. His family. The family he might have, the future he might have. The most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

The brilliant escape, the funny line to cap it, despite the lack of timing. And the girl was still dead. The last act had not materialised. The world, and himself, remained so far from what they should be: so imperfect.

I feel guilty looking at those "People of Walmart" photos you see on the Internet. It's not cool to make fun of pitiful people. You really think anyone who wasn't batshit crazy would walk out of the house in a camouflage mankini and a Confederate flag ball cap to go buy some new furnace filters? No, he's cray-cray.

All money is imaginary," answered the Calcatrix simply. "Money is magic everyone agrees to pretend is not magic. Observe! You treat it like magic, wield it like magic, fear it like magic! Why should a body with more small circles of copper or silver or gold than anyone else have an easy life full of treats every day and sleeping in and other people bowing down? The little circles can't get up and fight a battle or make a supper so splendid you get full just by looking at it or build a house of a thousand gables. They can do those things because everyone agrees to give them power. If everyone agreed to stop giving power to pretty metals and started giving it to thumbnails or mushroom caps or roof shingles or first kisses or tears or hours or puffin feathers, those little circles would just lay there tarnishing in the rain and not making anyone bow their noses down to the ground or stick them up in the air.

Cap truly believed there was nothing harder than being a kid. You were always an alien trying to learn the earth rules.

Lines formed at Ruby Pier- just as a line formed someplace else; five people, waiting, in five chosen memories, for a little girl named Amy or Annie to grow and to love and to age and to die, and to finally have her questions answered- why she lived and what she lived for. And in that line now was a whiskered old man, with a linen cap and a crooked nose, who waited in a place called the Stardust Band Shell to share his part of the secret of heaven: that each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.

And Miriam also refused to be approached. She was afraid of being set at nought, as by her own brothers. The girl was romantic in her soul. Everywhere was a Walter Scott heroine being loved by men with helmets or with plumes in their caps. She herself was something of a princess turned into a swine-girl in her own imagination. And she was afraid lest this boy, who, nevertheless, looked something like a Walter Scott hero, who could paint and speak French, and knew what algebra meant, and who went by train to Nottingham every day, might consider her simply as the swine-girl, unable to perceive the princess beneath; so she held aloof.

I'm sorry you don't like coming back here," her mother often said, to cap whatever petty dust-up they'd had. How could Emily explain: it wasn't her mother or Kersey she'd disowned, but her earlier self, that strange, ungrateful girl who strove to be first at everything and threw tantrums when she failed.

I especially loved the Old Testament. Even as a kid I had a sense of it being slightly illicit. As though someone had slipped an R-rated action movie into a pile of Disney DVDs. For starters Adam and Eve were naked on the first page. I was fascinated by Eve's ability to always stand in the Garden of Eden so that a tree branch or leaf was covering her private areas like some kind of organic bakini. But it was the Bible's murder and mayhem that really got my attention. When I started reading the real Bible I spent most of my time in Genesis Exodus 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings. Talk about violent. Cain killed Abel. The Egyptians fed babies to alligators. Moses killed an Egyptian. God killed thousands of Egyptians in the Red Sea. David killed Goliath and won a girl by bringing a bag of two hundred Philistine foreskins to his future father-in-law. I couldn't believe that Mom was so happy about my spending time each morning reading about gruesome battles prostitutes fratricide murder and adultery. What a way to have a "quiet time." While I grew up with a fairly solid grasp of Bible stories I didn't have a clear idea of how the Bible fit together or what it was all about. I certainly didn't understand how the exciting stories of the Old Testament connected to the rather less-exciting New Testament and the story of Jesus. This concept of the Bible as a bunch of disconnected stories sprinkled with wise advice and capped off with the inspirational life of Jesus seems fairly common among Christians. That is so unfortunate because to see the Bible as one book with one author and all about one main character is to see it in its breathtaking beauty.

I'd never have gotten this far without you," I said. Jack tipped his cap to me. My heart squirmed around to find a new position under my ribs. I closed the door fast before I could say something really stupid.

Desmond ushered the man inside. He was stooped and ugly, with an unkempt beard and unwashed clothes, yet Father greeted him pleasantly and asked his name. “Yoren, as it please m’lord. My pardons for the hour.” He bowed to Arya. “And this must be your son. He has your look.” “I’m a girl,” Arya said, exasperated. If the old man was down from the Wall, he must have come by way of Winterfell. “Do you know my brothers?” she asked excitedly. “Robb and Bran are at Winterfell, and Jon’s on the Wall. Jon Snow, he’s in the Night’s Watch too, you must know him, he has a direwolf, a white one with red eyes. Is Jon a ranger yet? I’m Arya Stark.” The old man in his smelly black clothes was looking at her oddly, but Arya could not seem to stop talking. “When you ride back to the Wall, would you bring Jon a letter if I wrote one?” She wished Jon were here right now. He’d believe her about the dungeons and the fat man with the forked beard and the wizard in the steel cap.

Maybe I'm willing to take that risk." "Well, I'm not." He slid one arm about her waist, tucked the other beneath her knees, and hauled her out of the water, into his arms. Like a damned mermaid. A sparkling, golden-haired, ruby-lipped mermaid. "I can't lose you." I can't lose you, he said. I can't fell my elbows, Penny thought. She couldn't help but give a long, swooning sigh. This man was so dangerous. He had a habit of blurting out these growly, possessive statements, punctuated by intense gazes and capped by displays of sheer virility.

Excuse me while I throw this down, I’m old and cranky and tired of hearing the idiocy repeated by people who ought to know better. Real women do not have curves. Real women do not look like just one thing. Real women have curves, and not. They are tall, and not. They are brown-skinned, and olive-skinned, and not. They have small breasts, and big ones, and no breasts whatsoever. Real women start their lives as baby girls. And as baby boys. And as babies of indeterminate biological sex whose bodies terrify their doctors and families into making all kinds of very sudden decisions. Real women have big hands and small hands and long elegant fingers and short stubby fingers and manicures and broken nails with dirt under them. Real women have armpit hair and leg hair and pubic hair and facial hair and chest hair and sexy moustaches and full, luxuriant beards. Real women have none of these things, spontaneously or as the result of intentional change. Real women are bald as eggs, by chance and by choice and by chemo. Real women have hair so long they can sit on it. Real women wear wigs and weaves and extensions and kufi and do-rags and hairnets and hijab and headscarves and hats and yarmulkes and textured rubber swim caps with the plastic flowers on the sides. Real women wear high heels and skirts. Or not. Real women are feminine and smell good and they are masculine and smell good and they are androgynous and smell good, except when they don’t smell so good, but that can be changed if desired because real women change stuff when they want to. Real women have ovaries. Unless they don’t, and sometimes they don’t because they were born that way and sometimes they don’t because they had to have their ovaries removed. Real women have uteruses, unless they don’t, see above. Real women have vaginas and clitorises and XX sex chromosomes and high estrogen levels, they ovulate and menstruate and can get pregnant and have babies. Except sometimes not, for a rather spectacular array of reasons both spontaneous and induced. Real women are fat. And thin. And both, and neither, and otherwise. Doesn’t make them any less real. There is a phrase I wish I could engrave upon the hearts of every single person, everywhere in the world, and it is this sentence which comes from the genius lips of the grand and eloquent Mr. Glenn Marla: There is no wrong way to have a body. I’m going to say it again because it’s important: There is no wrong way to have a body. And if your moral compass points in any way, shape, or form to equality, you need to get this through your thick skull and stop with the “real women are like such-and-so” crap. You are not the authority on what “real” human beings are, and who qualifies as “real” and on what basis. All human beings are real. Yes, I know you’re tired of feeling disenfranchised. It is a tiresome and loathsome thing to be and to feel. But the tit-for-tat disenfranchisement of others is not going to solve that problem. Solidarity has to start somewhere and it might as well be with you and me

That's him!" he said. "That's the one!" "Is it, indeed?" Inspector Hewitt asked, as he lifted the cap from my head and took the gown from my shoulders with the gentle deference of a valet. The little man's pale blue eyes bulged visibly in their sockets. "Why, it's only a girl!" he said. I could have slapped his face.

Do you mind?" she finally breathed. His lips twitched. "What's good for the goose." Lena felt ice slide down her spine. Crap. He had seen her checking him out.

He sighed raggedly. 'Do you ever give up?' 'No.' 'Do you ever go away?' 'No.' 'Do you ever do as you're told?' 'Not if I can help it.' 'Thank God.

Miles. You believe you took away that girl's chance at happiness, and until you confront the past, you won't ever move forward. You're gonna be reliving that day every single day until the day you die, unless you go see for your own that she's okay. Then maybe you'll see that it's okay for you to be happy again.

The prompt Paris morning struck its cheerful notes—in a soft breeze and a sprinkled smell, in the light flit, over the garden-floor, of bareheaded girls with the buckled strap of oblong boxes, in the type of ancient thrifty persons basking betimes where terrace-walls were warm, in the blue-frocked brass-labelled officialism of humble rakers and scrapers, in the deep references of a straight-pacing priest or the sharp ones of a white-gaitered red-legged soldier. He watched little brisk figures, figures whose movement was as the tick of the great Paris clock, take their smooth diagonal from point to point; the air had a taste as of something mixed with art, something that presented nature as a white-capped master-chef. The

Watching the children, he noticed two things especially. A girl of about five, and her sister, who was no more than three, wanted to drink from the pebbled concrete fountain at the playground’s edge, but it was too high for either of them, so the five-year-old…jumped up and, resting her stomach on the edge and grasping the sides, began to drink. But she was neither strong enough nor oblivious enough of the pain to hand on, and she began to slip off backward. At this, the three-year-old…advanced to her sister and, also grasping the edge of the fountain, placed her forehead against her sister’s behind, straining to hold her in place, eyes closed, body trembling, curls spilling from her cap. Her sister drank for a long time, held in position by an act as fine as Harry had ever seen on the battlefields of Europe.

I think I’m going to leave soon,” he said, finishing his water. He didn’t look at me when he said, “Do you need a ride?” “No,” I said. I tried to swallow my disappointment that he was leaving already. “I came with those guys over there.” I pointed at Conrad and Jeremiah. He nodded. “I figured, the way your brother kept looking over here.” I almost choked. “My brother? Who? Him?” I pointed at Conrad. He wasn’t looking at us. He was looking at a blond girl in a Red Sox cap, and she was looking right back. He was laughing, and he never laughed. “Yeah.” “He’s not my brother. He tries to act like he is, but he’s not,” I said. “He thinks he’s everybody’s big brother. It’s so patronizing…

What? I’m sorry to tell you, Cap, but your girls are hot.” Niko chucked a biscuit across the table, and it hit Rusty square in the face. “Shut the fuck up about my wife and her sisters.

No, of course you don’t think that is possible. You look at my face and you see a monster. You look at my hands and see them covered with the blood you ordered me to spill. But I tell you, Cap, it will happen. The girl has had no friend for going on two years. She has had her father and that is all. You see her as you see me, Cap. It is your great failing. You look, you see a monster. Only in the girl’s case, you see a useful monster. Perhaps that is because you are a white man. White men see monsters everywhere. White men look at their own pricks and see monsters.

A freshman had to wear a black turtleneck sweater, corduroy trousers, and a little black cap called a ‘dink’ on the back of his head,” he wrote in his autobiography, Confessions of a Maverick

Who are you? Alex would sometimes think, looking at another girl in a navy peacoat, pale face like a waning moon beneath a wool cap, ponytail lying like a dead animal over her shoulder. Who are you?

How I would love to be a British pound. A pound is free to travel to safety, and we are free to watch it go. This is the human triumph. This is called, globalisation. A girl like me gets stopped at immigration, but a pound can leap the turnstiles, and dodge the tackles of those big men with their uniform caps, and jump straight into a waiting airport taxi. Where to, sir? Western Civilisation, my good man, and make it snappy.

At Birkin Grif's left, his seat insecure on a scruffy packhorse, Theomeris Glyn, his only armour a steel-stressed leather cap, grumbled at the cold and the earliness of the hour, and cursed the flint hearts of city girls.

In The Garret Four little chests all in a row, Dim with dust, and worn by time, All fashioned and filled, long ago, By children now in their prime. Four little keys hung side by side, With faded ribbons, brave and gay When fastened there, with childish pride, Long ago, on a rainy day. Four little names, one on each lid, Carved out by a boyish hand, And underneath there lieth hid Histories of the happy band Once playing here, and pausing oft To hear the sweet refrain, That came and went on the roof aloft, In the falling summer rain. 'Meg' on the first lid, smooth and fair. I look in with loving eyes, For folded here, with well-known care, A goodly gathering lies, The record of a peaceful life-- Gifts to gentle child and girl, A bridal gown, lines to a wife, A tiny shoe, a baby curl. No toys in this first chest remain, For all are carried away, In their old age, to join again In another small Meg's play. Ah, happy mother! Well I know You hear, like a sweet refrain, Lullabies ever soft and low In the falling summer rain. 'Jo' on the next lid, scratched and worn, And within a motley store Of headless dolls, of schoolbooks torn, Birds and beasts that speak no more, Spoils brought home from the fairy ground Only trod by youthful feet, Dreams of a future never found, Memories of a past still sweet, Half-writ poems, stories wild, April letters, warm and cold, Diaries of a wilful child, Hints of a woman early old, A woman in a lonely home, Hearing, like a sad refrain-- 'Be worthy, love, and love will come,' In the falling summer rain. My Beth! the dust is always swept From the lid that bears your name, As if by loving eyes that wept, By careful hands that often came. Death canonized for us one saint, Ever less human than divine, And still we lay, with tender plaint, Relics in this household shrine-- The silver bell, so seldom rung, The little cap which last she wore, The fair, dead Catherine that hung By angels borne above her door. The songs she sang, without lament, In her prison-house of pain, Forever are they sweetly blent With the falling summer rain. Upon the last lid's polished field-- Legend now both fair and true A gallant knight bears on his shield, 'Amy' in letters gold and blue. Within lie snoods that bound her hair, Slippers that have danced their last, Faded flowers laid by with care, Fans whose airy toils are past, Gay valentines, all ardent flames, Trifles that have borne their part In girlish hopes and fears and shames, The record of a maiden heart Now learning fairer, truer spells, Hearing, like a blithe refrain, The silver sound of bridal bells In the falling summer rain. Four little chests all in a row, Dim with dust, and worn by time, Four women, taught by weal and woe To love and labor in their prime. Four sisters, parted for an hour, None lost, one only gone before, Made by love's immortal power, Nearest and dearest evermore. Oh, when these hidden stores of ours Lie open to the Father's sight, May they be rich in golden hours, Deeds that show fairer for the light, Lives whose brave music long shall ring, Like a spirit-stirring strain, Souls that shall gladly soar and sing In the long sunshine after rain

I never knew it happened like that." I snap my gaze to her. "What?" "You know. Romeo and Juliet stuff. Love at first sight and all that." "It's not like that," I say quickly. "You could have fooled me." We're up again. Catherine takes her shot. It swishes cleanly through the hoop. When I shoot, the ball bounces hard off the backboard and flies wildly through the air, knocking the coach in the head. I slap a hand over my mouth. The coach barely catches herself from falling. Several students laugh. She glares at me and readjusts her cap. With a small wave of apology, I head back to the end of the line. Will's there, fighting laughter. "Nice," he says. "Glad I'm downcourt of you." I cross my arms and resist smiling, resist letting myself feel good around him. But he makes it hard. I want to smile. I want to like him, to be around him, to know him. "Happy to amuse you." His smile slips then, and he's looking at me with that strange intensity again. Only I understand. I know why. He must remember...must recognize me on some level even though he can't understand it. "You want to go out?" he asks suddenly. I blink. "As in a date?" "Yes. That's what a guy usually means when he asks that question." Whistles blow. The guys and girls head in opposite directions. "Half-court scrimmage," Will mutters, looking unhappy as he watches the coaches toss out jerseys. "We'll talk later in study hall. Okay?" I nod, my chest uncomfortably tight, breath hard to catch. Seventh period. A few hours to decide whether to date a hunter. The choice should be easy, obvious, but already my head aches. I doubt anything will ever be easy for me again.

I lifted my hand and pulled the blue paper cap back a little, until a piece of my red fell out, then I reached my hand back inside the case. I slid my finger under some tubes and into her tiny purple hand. And just like that, like she had known it was me all along, she squeezed it.

It was all over by nine o’clock and with good night kisses for everyone, the little girls climbed up to bed laden with treasures and too happy for many words. But as they tied their round caps Dolly said, thoughtfully: “On the whole, I think it’s rather nice to be poor when people are kind to you.

Pumpkins. That's what we resemble-- pumpkins, in our orange graduation robes. 'This color makes me look so fat,' Angie says, straightening her cap. 'Why can't our school have decent colors?' 'You're not fat,' Michael says, dressed in shirt and tie. You're glowing. Like a nuclear pumpkin. Very attractive, really.

At childhood’s end, the houses petered out into playing fields, the factory, allotments kept, like mistresses, by kneeling married men, the silent railway line, the hermit’s caravan, till you came at last to the edge of the woods. It was there that I first clapped eyes on the wolf. He stood in a clearing, reading his verse out loud in his wolfy drawl, a paperback in his hairy paw, red wine staining his bearded jaw. What big ears he had! What big eyes he had! What teeth! In the interval, I made quite sure he spotted me, sweet sixteen, never been, babe, waif, and bought me a drink, my first. You might ask why. Here’s why. Poetry. The wolf, I knew, would lead me deep into the woods, away from home, to a dark tangled thorny place lit by the eyes of owls. I crawled in his wake, my stockings ripped to shreds, scraps of red from my blazer snagged on twig and branch, murder clues. I lost both shoes but got there, wolf’s lair, better beware. Lesson one that night, breath of the wolf in my ear, was the love poem. I clung till dawn to his thrashing fur, for what little girl doesn’t dearly love a wolf? Then I slid from between his heavy matted paws and went in search of a living bird – white dove – which flew, straight, from my hands to his hope mouth. One bite, dead. How nice, breakfast in bed, he said, licking his chops. As soon as he slept, I crept to the back of the lair, where a whole wall was crimson, gold, aglow with books. Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head, warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood. But then I was young – and it took ten years in the woods to tell that a mushroom stoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that birds are the uttered thought of trees, that a greying wolf howls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out, season after season, same rhyme, same reason. I took an axe to a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to a salmon to see how it leapt. I took an axe to the wolf as he slept, one chop, scrotum to throat, and saw the glistening, virgin white of my grandmother’s bones. I filled his old belly with stones. I stitched him up. Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all alone. Little Red-Cap

She climbed down the cliffs after tying her sweater loosely around her waist. Down below she could see nothing but jagged rocks and waves. She was creful, but I watched her feet more than the view she saw- I worried about her slipping. My mother's desire to reach those waves, touch her feet to another ocean on the other side of the country, was all she was thinking of- the pure baptismal goal of it. Whoosh and you can start over again. Or was life more like the horrible game in gym that has you running from one side of an enclosed space to another, picking up and setting down wooden blocks without end? She was thinking reach the waves, the waves, the waves, and I was watching her navigate the rocks, and when we heard her we did so together- looking up in shock. It was a baby on the beach. In among the rocks was a sandy cove, my mother now saw, and crawling across the sand on a blanket was a baby in knitted pink cap and singlet and boots. She was alone on the blanket with a stuffed white toy- my mother thought a lamb. With their backs to my mother as she descended were a group of adults-very official and frantic-looking- wearing black and navy with cool slants to their hats and boots. Then my wildlife photographer's eye saw the tripods and silver circles rimmed by wire, which, when a young man moved them left or right, bounced light off or on the baby on her blanket. My mother started laughing, but only one assistant turned to notice her up among the rocks; everyone else was too busy. This was an ad for something. I imagined, but what? New fresh infant girls to replace your own? As my mother laughed and I watched her face light up, I also saw it fall into strange lines. She saw the waves behind the girl child and how both beautiful and intoxicating they were- they could sweep up so softly and remove this gril from the beach. All the stylish people could chase after her, but she would drown in a moment- no one, not even a mother who had every nerve attuned to anticipate disaster, could have saved her if the waves leapt up, if life went on as usual and freak accidents peppered a calm shore.

She was a small, hot-tempered woman who wore a widow’s cap with strings floating at her cheeks, and when it was cold, a squirrely fur cloak and tiny fur-lined shoes. She was known to line girls up on the Idle Bench for the smallest infraction and scream at them until they fainted. I despised her, and her “polite education for the female mind,” which was composed

Then there were her childhood book: Anne of Green Gables, Heidi, What Katy did next, Pollyanna - stories about girls who were good. All Pollyanna had ever done wrong was ruin her parasol. Beth in Little Women was so perfect she was only fit for heaven. Why were girls in novels exemplary, almost saintly? Grace preferred adventure stories, histories and romances about what to do if you were damned and female, tales about women who were kind, likeable and believable, who escaped unpunished. No thin Quakers with lace caps. No beatific consumptives coughing delicately. No unloved, eternally jolly orphans. Grace craved books about girls like herself: good women, normal women in a world bigger and more powerful than themselves.

Married life must agree with you.” “Oh, yes,” she replied. “It's been what every girl dreams of, what with all the gossip and scandal, and the awkward dinner parties with family members who flirt with one's new husband. No to mention capped off by a nice little break-in and attempted kidnapping. Truly, if I'd known it was going to be this much fun, I would have married a long time ago.

I was exhausted, and even though I knew it’d be my last night in my own bed, I fell asleep right away and didn’t wake up until Mother called me at five-thirty the next morning. Fortunately, it wasn’t as hot as Sunday; a warm rain fell throughout the day. The four of us were wrapped in so many layers of clothes it looked as if we were going off to spend the night in a refrigerator, and all that just so we could take more clothes with us. No Jew in our situation would dare leave the house with a suitcase full of clothes. I was wearing two vests, three pairs of pants, a dress, and over that a skirt, a jacket, a raincoat, two pairs of stockings, heavy shoes, a cap, a scarf and lots more. I was suffocating even before we left the house, but no one bothered to ask me how I felt.

She sometimes takes her little brother for a walk round this way," explained Bingo. "I thought we would meet her and bow, and you could see her, you know, and then we would walk on." "Of course," I said, "that's enough excitement for anyone, and undoubtedly a corking reward for tramping three miles out of one's way over ploughed fields with tight boots, but don't we do anything else? Don't we tack on to the girl and buzz along with her?" "Good Lord!" said Bingo, honestly amazed. "You don't suppose I've got nerve enough for that, do you? I just look at her from afar off and all that sort of thing. Quick! Here she comes! No, I'm wrong!" It was like that song of Harry Lauder's where he's waiting for the girl and says, "This is her-r-r. No, it's a rabbut." Young Bingo made me stand there in the teeth of a nor'-east half-gale for ten minutes, keeping me on my toes with a series of false alarms, and I was just thinking of suggesting that we should lay off and give the rest of the proceedings a miss, when round the corner there came a fox-terrier, and Bingo quivered like an aspen. Then there hove in sight a small boy, and he shook like a jelly. Finally, like a star whose entrance has been worked up by the personnel of the ensemble, a girl appeared, and his emotion was painful to witness. His face got so red that, what with his white collar and the fact that the wind had turned his nose blue, he looked more like a French flag than anything else. He sagged from the waist upwards, as if he had been filleted. He was just raising his fingers limply to his cap when he suddenly saw that the girl wasn't alone. A chappie in clerical costume was also among those present, and the sight of him didn't seem to do Bingo a bit of good. His face got redder and his nose bluer, and it wasn't till they had nearly passed that he managed to get hold of his cap. The girl bowed, the curate said, "Ah, Little. Rough weather," the dog barked, and then they toddled on and the entertainment was over.

was she not the young girl that I had seen for the first time at Balbec, with her bold, laughing eyes under her jockey-cap, still unknown to me, thin as a cut-out figure silhouetted on the waves? These effigies, stored intact in the memory, when we return to them, astonish us by their lack of resemblance to the being we know now; we understand then how they are daily, painstakingly remodeled by habit.

Seems to me," said Cap'n Bill, as he sat beside Trot under the big acacia tree, looking out over the blue ocean, "seems to me, Trot, as how the more we know, the more we find we don't know." "I can't quite make that out, Cap'n Bill," answered the little girl in a serious voice, after a moment's thought, during which her eyes followed those of the old sailor-man across the glassy surface of the sea. "Seems to me that all we learn is jus' so much gained." "I know; it looks that way at first sight," said the sailor, nodding his head; "but those as knows the least have a habit of thinkin' they know all there is to know, while them as knows the most admits what a turr'ble big world this is. It's the knowing ones that realize one lifetime ain't long enough to git more'n a few dips o' the oars of knowledge.

How? How did you get Torin to Hex Hall?” Dad blinked rapidly, and at first, I thought he was surprised by my question. Then I realized that, no, he was fighting tears. Seeing my father, who practically had a PhD in Stiff Upper Lip, on the verge of crying because he was so happy to see me made my own eyes sting. Then he cleared his throat, straightened his shoulders, and said, “It was exceedingly difficult.” I laughed through my tears. “I bet.” “It was Torin’s idea,” someone said behind me, and I turned to see Izzy standing there. Like my parents and her sister, she was dressed in jeans and a black jacket, although she also had a black cap pulled over her bright hair. “We had tons of old spell books, and after you and Cal disappeared, he started looking through them. Found a spell that would let him travel to a different mirror.” “Of course, the problem was finding your mirror,” Aislinn said, coming out of the darkness. “Aren’t you afraid that he’ll permanently peace out from his mirror and start hanging out in girls’ locker rooms or something?” Aislinn’s eyes slid to Izzy. “Torin has his reasons for wanting to stay with us,” she said, and even in the dim light, I saw red creepy up Izzy’s cheeks. Maybe one day, I’d get to the bottom of whatever was going on there. Preferably once I was done getting to the bottom of the thousand other things on my agenda.

Penny smoothed her gloved hands along the sheer silk netting that overlaid an underdress of ivory satin. The gauzy fabric was patterned with tiny pink roses connected by curling tendrils of green. The cap sleeves were fashioned from satin petals layered over creamy lace. A wide band of green velvet cinched her waist, and the daring neckline revealed the perfect amount of cleavage. "Emma works miracles," she said. "The beauty is all in the wearer," Emma said graciously.

It would be an especially difficult vocation for a girl like her: she’s so tender-hearted, so sensitive. She’s been protected from the worst in human nature: how would she cope, once brought face to face with that worst? She ought to choose a safer career path, such as medicine, or perhaps dentistry. And marry a stable and loving husband eventually, of course. She shouldn’t fritter herself away on a world of illusions—of vanishing rainbows, of bursting bubbles, of cloud-capped towers—the way he himself has done.

Marcy put her car in drive, then put it back in park. She took a deep breath. Then two. Then three. This is a nightmare, but at least it will be a short one. He was in Cap City. They’ll see that, and they’ll let him go. “Then,” she told her car (it seemed so empty without the girls giggling and squabbling in the backseat), “we will sue their asses off.” That straightened her spine and brought the world back into focus. She drove home to Barnum Court, keeping to the speed limit and coming to a full stop at every stop sign.

I looked back and forth between them, feeling the heat of their anger, the unspoken words swelling in the air like smoke. Jerry took a slow sip from his beer and lit another cigarette. "You don't know anything about that little girl," he told Nona. "You're just jealous because Cap belongs to her now." I could see Nona's heartbeat flutter beneath her t-shirt, the cords tightening in her neck. "Her mommy and daddy might have paid for him," she whispered. "But he's mine." I waited for Jerry to cave in to her, to apologize, to make things right between them. But he held her gaze, unwavering. "He's not." Nona stubbed her cigarette out on the barn floor, then stood. "If you don't believe me," she whispered, "I'll show you." My sister crossed the barn to Cap's stall and clicked her tongue at him. His gold head appeared in the doorway and Nona swung the stall door open. "Come on out." she told him. Don't!" I said, but she didn't pause. Cap took several steps forward until he was standing completely free in the barn. I jumped up, blocking the doorway so that he couldn't bolt. Jerry stood and widened himself beside me, stretching out his arms. "What the hell are you doing?" he asked. Nona stood beside Cap's head and lifted her arms as though she was holding an invisible lead rope. When she began to walk, Cap moved alongside her, matching his pace to hers. Whoa," Nona said quietly and Cap stopped. My sister made small noises with her tongue, whispering words we couldn't hear. Cap's ears twitched and his weight shifted as he adjusted his feet, setting up perfectly in showmanship form. Nona stepped back to present him to us, and Jerry and I dropped our arms to our sides. Ta da!" she said, clapping her hands at her own accomplishment. Very impressive," Jerry said in a low voice. "Now put the pony away." Again, Nona lifted her hands as if holding a lead rope, and again, Cap followed. She stepped into him and he turned on his heel, then walked beside her through the barn and back into his stall. Once he was inside, Nona closed the door and held her hands out to us. She hadn't touched him once. Now," she said evenly. "Tell me again what isn't mine." Jerry sank back into his chair, cracking open a fresh beer. "If that horse was so important to you, maybe you shouldn't have left him behind to be sold off to strangers." Nona's face constricted, her cheeks and neck darkening in splotches of red. "Alice, tell him," she whispered. "Tell him that Cap belongs to me." Sheila Altman could practice for the rest of her life, and she would never be able to do what my sister had just done. Cap would never follow her blindly, never walk on water for her. But my eyes traveled sideways to Cap's stall where his embroidered halter hung from its hook. If the Altmans ever moved to a different town, they would take Cap with them. My sister would never see him again. It wouldn't matter what he would or wouldn't do for her. My sister waited a moment for me to speak, and when I didn't, she burst into tears, her shoulders heaving, her mouth wrenching open. Jerry and I glanced at each other, startled by the sudden burst of emotion. You can both go to hell," Nona hiccuped, and turned for the house. "Right straight to hell.

Maybe I'm willing to take that risk." "Well, I'm not." He slid one arm about her waist, tucked the other beneath her knees, and hauled her out of the water, into his arms. Like a damned mermaid. A sparkling, golden-haired, ruby-lipped mermaid. "I can't lose you." I can't lose you, he said. I can't feel my elbows, Penny thought. She couldn't help but give a long, swooning sigh. This man was so dangerous. He had a habit of blurting out these growly, possessive statements, punctuated by intense gazes and capped by displays of sheer virility.

When his count reached thirty children he stopped. Five more hours at six children per hour would take him to eight o’clock. He crouched down before a two-year-old girl. Lily was her name if he remembered correctly. He said, “Hello Beautiful,” and stroked her hot cheek with the back of his hand. He took the cap off the iodine and wet the tip of his index finger. He drew a semicircle on her forehead and added two dots. To him it was a smiley face, but if asked he would say it was a moon and two stars. Turning to the mother he said, “Your daughter will be the last patient of the day.

What courses are people excited about now? I asked a blonde senior in cap and gown. Nuclear physics, maybe? Modern art? Civilizations of Africa? Looking at me as if I were some prehistoric dinosaur, she said: "Girls don't get excited about things like that anymore. We don't want careers. Our parents expect us to go to college, everybody goes. You're a social outcast at home if you don't. But a girl who got serious about anything she studied, like wanting to go on and do research, would be peculiar, unfeminine. I guess everybody wants to graduate with a diamond ring on her finger, that's the important thing.

I had not yet been down to the cellar where I was to sleep. I took a candle with me but was too tired to look around beyond finding a bed, pillow and blanket. Leaving the trap door of the cellar open so that cool, fresh air could reach me, I took off my shoes, cap, apron and dress, prayed briefly, and lay down. I was about to blow out the candle when I noticed the painting hanging at the foot of my bed. I sat up, wide awake now. It was another picture of Christ on the Cross, smaller than the one upstairs but even more disturbing. Christ had thrown his head back in pain, and Mary Magdalene’s eyes were rolling. I Iay back gingerly, unable to take my eyes off it. I could not imagine sleeping in the room with the painting. I wanted to take it down but did not dare. Finally I blew out the candle—I could not afford to waste candles on my first day in the new house. I lay back again, my eyes fixed to the place where I knew the painting hung. I slept badly that night, tired as I was. I woke often and looked for the painting. Though I could see nothing on the wall, every detail was fixed in my mind. Finally, when it was beginning to grow light, the painting appeared again and I was sure the Virgin Mary was looking down at me.

The two strangers got to the waffle station at exactly the same time. (I swear I’m like an award-winning orchestra conductor sometimes.) Cara poured a ladleful of regular batter onto her machine, while Sammy poured her own ladle and grabbed the container of chocolate chips. Wait for it . . . Wait for it . . . “Shit!” Sammy stared at the mountain of chocolate now piled up on the batter. The cap of the container had come off completely and rolled along the floor right into Cara’s feet. “Oh my god, let me help you!” Cara sprung to action, as I knew she would, grabbing a broom and dustpan that I’d placed nearby and cleaning up the chips on the floor. “Oh, you don’t have to,” Sammy stammered. “I’m sorry—I don’t know how that happened.” Cara swept the chips into the dustpan and surveyed Sammy’s half-cooked waffle, which was now completely coated in messy, gooey chocolate. “I mean, I love chocolate as much as the next girl, but even that’s a little much for me.” Sammy laughed, then fiddled with the container in her hand. “I think some dick unscrewed the top so they’d all fall out.” She rolled her eyes. “College boys.” (Or metaphysical entities. Either one.) “Wow, what an asshole,” Cara said. “People are such idiots.

Behind the sullen girl sat Denis Cooverman, sweating: along the cap of his mortarboard, trickling behind his ears and rippling down his forehead; around his nostrils and in that groove below his nose (which Denis would be quick to identify as the philtrum...); from his palms, behind his knees, inside his elbows, between his toes and from many locations not typically associated with perpiratory activity; squirting out his nipples, spewing from his navel, coursing between his buttocks and forming a tiny lake that gently lapped at his genitals; from under his arms, naturally, in two varietals--hot and sticky,a nd cold and terrified.

The rainy winter days passed quickly. Thanksgiving came and not long afterward Christmas vacation. Ramona missed Daisy, who went with her family to visit her grandparents. When she returned, the girls spent an afternoon dressing up Roberta in the clothes she had received for Christmas. Roberta was agreeable to having a dress pulled over her head, her arms stuffed into a sweater, her head shoved into caps. She enjoyed the girls’ admiration. She was not so happy about a pair of crocheted slippers with ears and tails that looked like rabbits, a gift from Howie’s grandmother, who enjoyed crocheting. Roberta did not care for the slippers.

Approaching the trail, he broke through the thicket a short distance ahead of the Empath. Causing the Empaths horse to startle as the surprised rider jerked on the reins. Cap was equally surprised to find a young girl before him instead of an older, experienced male Empath. Cap brought his horse to a quick halt. The young girl pulled a small knife from her boot and cautioned him. "I don't know where you came from, but I'm not easy prey.” Her voice shook slightly with fear as she raised the knife. Not sure how to proceed, they stared silently at each other. Cap had always believed that Empaths didn't carry weapons. This pretty, chestnut haired girl couldn't be more than 18 years old. Her long straight tresses covered the spot on her jacket where the Empathic Emblem was usually worn, causing Cap to doubt she was the one he sought. Not wanting to frighten her any more than he already had, Cap tried to explain. "I'm Commander Caplin Taylor. I’m looking for an Empath that is headed for the Western Hunting Lodge.” "My name is Kendra; I am the Empath you seek.” She answered cautiously, still holding the blade. A noise from the brush drew her attention as a small rodent pounced out, trying to evade an unseen predator. Cap was just close enough to lurch forward and snatch the dirk from her hand. Her head jerked back in alarm. "Bosen May has been mauled by a Sraeb, his shoulder is a mass of pulp." Cap spoke quickly not wanting to hesitate any longer. That was all Kendra needed to hear. She pushed her horse past him and headed quickly down the trail. "Wait!" Cap called after her, turning his horse around. Reining in the horse, she turned back to face him annoyed by the delay. "Are you a good horseman?" Cap asked, as he stuffed her dirk in his jacket. "I've been in the saddle since I was a child." She answered, abruptly. "Okay so just a few years then?" Cap's rebuke angered her. Jerking the horse back toward the trail, she ignored him. "Wait, I'm sorry!" Cap called after her. "It's just that I know a quicker way, if you can handle some rough terrain." "Let’s go then." Kendra replied, gruffly, turning back to face him. Without another word, Cap dove back into the brush and the girl followed.

Never play the princess when you can be the queen: rule the kingdom, swing a scepter, wear a crown of gold. Don’t dance in glass slippers, crystal carving up your toes -- be a barefoot Amazon instead, for those shoes will surely shatter on your feet. Never wear only pink when you can strut in crimson red, sweat in heather grey, and shimmer in sky blue, claim the golden sun upon your hair. Colors are for everyone, boys and girls, men and women -- be a verdant garden, the landscape of Versailles, not a pale primrose blindly pushed aside. Chase green dragons and one-eyed zombies, fierce and fiery toothy monsters, not merely lazy butterflies, sweet and slow on summer days. For you can tame the most brutish beasts with your wily wits and charm, and lizard scales feel just as smooth as gossamer insect wings. Tramp muddy through the house in a purple tutu and cowboy boots. Have a tea party in your overalls. Build a fort of birch branches, a zoo of Legos, a rocketship of Queen Anne chairs and coverlets, first stop on the moon. Dream of dinosaurs and baby dolls, bold brontosaurus and bookish Belle, not Barbie on the runway or Disney damsels in distress -- you are much too strong to play the simpering waif. Don a baseball cap, dance with Daddy, paint your toenails, climb a cottonwood. Learn to speak with both your mind and heart. For the ground beneath will hold you, dear -- know that you are free. And never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be.

God bless her, but the child is wild. It’s not her fault. But she’ll never be normal. At least let her enjoy her childhood. You read the report, didn’t you? There was rotten food in the fridge, clothes all over the floor. She came here wearing one of her father’s T-shirts and his baseball cap. You just wanted to throw out all the things that she had in her suitcase and give her a chance to start all over again. And the child’s fingernails were long. Who ever heard of long fingernails on a twelve-year-old? And she smelled!’ ‘Is she worse than Rodney?’ ‘Rodney? No, God no. She doesn’t need psychiatric help. I’m just saying that she needs a couple extra things like a sweater or some new toys of her own.’ Later that afternoon, Isabelle came into my room with a box filled with girls’ toys. I pulled out a blue pony with long yellow hair and pink seashells on its butt. ‘Who was Rodney?’ I asked her. A little boy who lived here and used to wear swimming goggles all the time. Who’s been talking to you about Rodney?’ ‘You mentioned him to the social worker.’ ‘Lord! Don’t worry what I say to the social worker. I have to make you sound like a real sorrowful case to be able to get you more things. See, I got you a pretty pony, didn’t I?’ I guess it was worth having your self-esteem destroyed if there was a free toy involved. Isabelle told me that she was trying to get us a subscription to Ranger Rick magazine. I didn’t want to hear what she was going to say about me to get it.

There is a lovely old-fashioned pearl set in the treasure chest, but Mother said real flowers were the prettiest ornament for a young girl, and Laurie promised to send me all I want," replied Meg. "Now, let me see, there's my new gray walking suit, just curl up the feather in my hat, Beth, then my poplin for Sunday and the small party, it looks heavy for spring, doesn't it? The violet silk would be so nice. Oh, dear!" "Never mind, you've got the tarlaton for the big party, and you always look like an angel in white," said Amy, brooding over the little store of finery in which her soul delighted. "It isn't low-necked, and it doesn't sweep enough, but it will have to do. My blue housedress looks so well, turned and freshly trimmed, that I feel as if I'd got a new one. My silk sacque isn't a bit the fashion, and my bonnet doesn't look like Sallie's. I didn't like to say anything, but I was sadly disappointed in my umbrella. I told Mother black with a white handle, but she forgot and bought a green one with a yellowish handle. It's strong and neat, so I ought not to complain, but I know I shall feel ashamed of it beside Annie's silk one with a gold top," sighed Meg, surveying the little umbrella with great disfavor. "Change it," advised Jo. "I won't be so silly, or hurt Marmee's feelings, when she took so much pains to get my things. It's a nonsensical notion of mine, and I'm not going to give up to it. My silk stockings and two pairs of new gloves are my comfort. You are a dear to lend me yours, Jo. I feel so rich and sort of elegant, with two new pairs, and the old ones cleaned up for common." And Meg took a refreshing peep at her glove box. "Annie Moffat has blue and pink bows on her nightcaps. Would you put some on mine?" she asked, as Beth brought up a pile of snowy muslins, fresh from Hannah's hands. "No, I wouldn't, for the smart caps won't match the plain gowns without any trimming on them. Poor folks shouldn't rig," said Jo decidedly. "I wonder if I shall ever be happy enough to have real lace on my clothes and bows on my caps?" said Meg impatiently. "You said the other day that you'd be perfectly happy if you could only go to Annie Moffat's," observed Beth in her quiet way. "So I did! Well, I am happy, and I won't fret, but it does seem as if the more one gets the more one wants, doesn't it?

In the deep woods of the far North, under feathery leaves of fern, was a great fairyland of merry elves, sometimes called forest brownies. These elves lived joyfully. They had everything at hand and did not need to worry much about living. Berries and nuts grew plentiful in the forest. Rivers and springs provided the elves with crystal water. Flowers prepared them drink from their flavorful juices, which the munchkins loved greatly. At midnight the elves climbed into flower cups and drank drops of their sweet water with much delight. Every elf would tell a wonderful fairy tale to the flower to thank it for the treat. Despite this abundance, the pixies did not sit back and do nothing. They tinkered with their tasks all day long. They cleaned their houses. They swung on tree branches and swam in forested streams. Together with the early birds, they welcomed the sunrise, listened to the thunder growling, the whispering of leaves and blades of grass, and the conversations of the animals. The birds told them about warm countries, sunbeams whispered of distant seas, and the moon spoke of treasures hidden deeply in the earth. In winter, the elves lived in abandoned nests and hollows. Every sunny day they came out of their burrows and made the forest ring with their happy shouts, throwing tiny snowballs in all directions and building snowmen as small as the pinky finger of a little girl. The munchkins thought they were giants five times as large as them. With the first breath of spring, the elves left their winter residences and moved to the cups of the snowdrop flowers. Looking around, they watched the snow as it turned black and melted. They kept an eye on the blossoming of hazel trees while the leaves were still sleeping in their warm buds. They observed squirrels moving their last winter supplies from storage back to their homes. Gnomes welcomed the birds coming back to their old nests, where the elves lived during winters. Little by little, the forest once more grew green. One moonlight night, elves were sitting at an old willow tree and listening to mermaids singing about their underwater kingdom. “Brothers! Where is Murzilka? He has not been around for a long time!” said one of the elves, Father Beardie, who had a long white beard. He was older than others and well respected in his striped stocking cap. “I’m here,” a snotty voice arose, and Murzilka himself, nicknamed Feather Head, jumped from the top of the tree. All the brothers loved Murzilka, but thought he was lazy, as he actually was. Also, he loved to dress in a tailcoat, tall black hat, boots with narrow toes, a cane and a single eyeglass, being very proud of that look. “Do you know where I’m coming from? The very Arctic Ocean!” roared he. Usually, his words were hard to believe. That time, though, his announcement sounded so marvelous that all elves around him were agape with wonder. “You were there, really? Were you? How did you get there?” asked the sprites. “As easy as ABC! I came by the fox one day and caught her packing her things to visit her cousin, a silver fox who lives by the Arctic Ocean. “Take me with you,” I said to the fox. “Oh, no, you’ll freeze there! You know, it’s cold there!” she said. “Come on.” I said. “What are you talking about? What cold? Summer is here.” “Here we have summer, but there they have winter,” she answered. “No,” I thought. “She must be lying because she does not want to give me a ride.” Without telling her a word, I jumped upon her back and hid in her bushy fur, so even Father Frost could not find me. Like it or not, she had to take me with her. We ran for a long time. Another forest followed our woods, and then a boundless plain opened, a swamp covered with lichen and moss. Despite the intense heat, it had not entirely thawed. “This is tundra,” said my fellow traveler. “Tundra? What is tundra?” asked I. “Tundra is a huge, forever frozen wetland covering the entire coast of the Arctic Ocean.

He smiled and pulled the ugly white fichu from her neck. She blinked and looked down at the simple, square neckline of her bodice as if she'd never seen it. Perhaps she hadn't. Perhaps she dressed in the dark like a nun. "What are you doing?" He sighed. "I confess, I find your naïveté perplexing. How have you arrived at the advanced age of six and twenty without having anyone attempt seduction upon yourself? I'm of two minds on the matter: One, utter astonishment at my sex and their deaf disregard for your siren call. Two, glee at the thought that your innocence might signal that you are indeed innocent. Why this should excite me so, I don't know- virginity has never before been a particular whim of mine. I think perhaps it's the setting. Who knows how many virgins were deflowered here by my lusty ancestors? Or," he said as he deftly unpinned and tossed aside her apron, "maybe it's simply you." "I don't..." Her words trailed off and then, interestingly, she blushed a deep rose. Well. That question settled, then. His little maiden was really a maiden. "What?" "I think it's you," he confided, pulling the strings tying her hideous mobcap beneath her chin. She made a wild grab for it, but he was faster, snatching the bloody thing off- finally, and with a great deal of satisfaction. She might've deprived him of a wife that it'd taken him half a year and a rather large sum of money to entangle, but by God, he'd taken off her awful cap. And underneath... "Oh, Séraphine," he breathed, enchanted, for her hair was as black as coal, as black as night, as black as his own soul, save for one white streak just over her left eye. But she'd twisted and braided and tortured the strands, binding them tight to her head, and his fingers itched to let them free. "Don't!" she said, as if she knew what he wanted, her hands flying up to cover her hair. He batted them aside, laughing, pulling a pin here, a pin there, dropping them carelessly to the carpet as she squealed like a little girl and backed away from him, trying frantically to ward off his fingers. He might've taken pity on her had he not just spent an hour on a freezing moor, wondering if he was going to find her dead, neck broken, at the bottom of a hill. Her hair came down all at once, a tumbling mass, tousled and heavy and nearly down to her waist. "Wonderful," he murmured, taking it in both hands and lifting it.

Because this tea kaiseki would be served so soon after breakfast, it would be considerably smaller than a traditional one. As a result, Stephen had decided to serve each mini tea kaiseki in a round stacking bento box, which looked like two miso soup bowls whose rims had been glued together. After lifting off the top dome-shaped cover the women would behold a little round tray sporting a tangle of raw squid strips and blanched scallions bound in a tahini-miso sauce pepped up with mustard. Underneath this seafood "salad" they would find a slightly deeper "tray" packed with pearly white rice garnished with a pink salted cherry blossom. Finally, under the rice would be their soup bowl containing the wanmori, the apex of the tea kaiseki. Inside the dashi base we had placed a large ball of fu (wheat gluten) shaped and colored to resemble a peach. Spongy and soft, it had a savory center of ground duck and sweet lily bulb. A cluster of fresh spinach leaves, to symbolize the budding of spring, accented the "peach," along with a shiitake mushroom cap simmered in mirin, sake, and soy. When the women had finished their meals, we served them tiny pink azuki bean paste sweets. David whipped them a bowl of thick green tea. For the dry sweets eaten before his thin tea, we served them flower-shaped refined sugar candies tinted pink. After all the women had left, Stephen, his helper, Mark, and I sat down to enjoy our own "Girl's Day" meal. And even though I was sitting in the corner of Stephen's dish-strewn kitchen in my T-shirt and rumpled khakis, that soft peach dumpling really did taste feminine and delicate.

slowly, slowly pulling up. Or grabbing hold of Debby’s arm, vise-like, for an Indian rub and what starts as a joke gets more and more frantic, him rubbing until he draws speckles of blood, his teeth grinding. She could see him getting that same look Runner got when he was around the kids: jacked up and tense. “Dad needs to leave.” “Geez, Patty, not even a hi before you toss me out? Come on, let’s talk, I got a business proposition for you.” “I’m in no position to make a business deal, Runner,” she said. “I’m broke.” “You’re never as broke as you say,” he said with a leer, and twisted his baseball cap backward on stringy hair. He’d meant it to sound jokey, but it came out menacing, as if she’d better not be broke if she knew what was good for her. He dumped the girls off him and walked over to her, standing too close as always, beer sweat sticking his longjohn shirt to his chest. “Didn’t you just sell the tiller, Patty? Vern Evelee told

Violet is missing, and it seems Vance is as well,” Damien says on a huff as he exits. “Why the bloody hell would he leave with her directly after a wolf attack?” I ask as I start toward the door, finishing off my drink. “Without a word?” “I’m not sure he left with her, so much as chased after her, since it looks like he found her note first,” Damien says as he jogs down the stairs. I have the paper snatched out of his hand before he realizes it’s missing, and I flip it over, reading it. DO NOT FOLLOW ME. THIS VACATION SUCKS TOO HARD TO STAY. I’M GOING HOME TO RELAX. Sincerely, the SINGLE gypsy girl who can think for herself P.S. I’LL KEY YOUR FUCKING CARS if you come looking for me before I’m ready to deal with you again. “Little rude to leave so soon, considering how hard I worked to find out where the hell you’d all gone,” I point out before walking out the door. I’m gone before they can further delay me. “She put it in shouty caps!” Damien calls to my back, though I have no idea what the hell that’s supposed to mean.

One more question.” Henry waited until Faith put her finger down before continuing. “Do you ever remember your father wearing a baseball hat?” Like a kid flipping through the pages of a scrapbook, she ran through images of her father in her mind. No baseball cap. But it didn’t matter. Faith just wanted to stop seeing the man the world believed killed her sister. Yet the tighter she closed her eyes, the faster the images came. Her father at her horse show, sitting in the stands at Kim’s soccer game, his smiling face as he pushed her on the swing . . . Faith pressed her palms against the sides of her head and started screaming. The office door flew open. Dr. Rodgers, Titus, and two men in navy-blue suits rushed into the room. Like a boxer against the ropes, the images rained down on Faith like blows, but she was helpless to stop them. Each one sent her head reeling until she felt like she was falling—tumbling into oblivion, welcoming the darkness and an end to the pain. She felt Titus’s strong arms around her, carrying her back to her room.

The rules are: your house is a safe zone. School is a safe zone, but not the parking lot. Once you step out the door, it’s all fair game. You’re out if you get hit with a two-hand touch. And if you renege on your wish, your life is forfeit. Genevieve comes up with that last part and it gives me shivers. Trevor Pike shudders and says, “Girls are scary.” “No, girls in their family are scary,” Peter says, gesturing at Chris and Genevieve. They both smile, and in those smiles I see the family resemblance. Casting a sidelong glance at me, Peter says hopefully, “You’re not scary, though. You’re sweet, right?” Suddenly I remember something Stormy said to me. Don’t ever let him get too sure of you. Peter is very sure of me. As sure as a person could be. “I can be scary too,” I quietly say back, and he blanches. Then, to everyone else, I say, “Let’s just have fun with it.” “Oh, it’ll be fun,” John assures me. He puts his Orioles cap on his head and pulls the brim down. “Game on.” He catches my eye. “If you thought I was good at Model UN, wait till you see my Zero Dark Thirty skills.

When I'm dressed like this, people will say I don't look like a doctor." Garrett paused before continuing wryly. "On the other hand, they already say that, even when I'm wearing a surgeon's cap and gown." Carys, who was playing with the left-over glass beads on the vanity table, volunteered innocently, "You've always looked like a doctor to me." Helen smiled at her little sister. "Did you know, Carys, that Dr. Gibson is the only lady doctor in England?" Carys shook her head, regarding Garrett with round-eyed interest. "Why aren't there others?" Garrett smiled. "Many people believe women aren't suited to work in the medical profession." "But women can be nurses," Carys said with a child's clear-eyed logic. "Why can't they be doctors?" "There are many female doctors, as a matter of fact, in countries such as America and France. Unfortunately, women aren't allowed to earn a medical degree here. Yet." "But that's not fair." Garrett smiled down into the girl's upturned face. "There will always be people who say your dreams are impossible. But they can't stop you unless you agree with them.

Can I get a regular skim cap?” I didn’t get coffee here every day—because I had my coffee machine, or used to have—how depressing—but I visited regularly enough that they knew me. Sometimes I wanted something frothy with chocolate on the top, and I was too lazy to do that at home. Frances was in her mid-thirties, had gorgeous straight blonde hair, which was pulled back in a sleek ponytail, and an infectious smile. “Hey, chicky. Coming right up. A little birdie told me it was your birthday yesterday. Happy birthday!” She banged used coffee grounds out of the thingamajig and filled it with new ones. “Aw, thanks. Did you run into the girls last night?” The girls being my besties, Sophie and Michelle. “Yep. How come you weren’t there? They told me you piked.” She screwed the thingamajig into the machine and pressed the button. And wouldn’t you know, it worked. I wish my machine still worked. “Big day photographing a wedding. One drink and I would have fallen asleep.” I laughed—it wasn’t too far from the truth. So what if I left out the bit where I had a pity party because my brother hadn’t called. I’d try calling him later. Knowing him, he had a good

Mathilde watched as down the street came a little girl in a red snowsuit with purple racing stripes. Mittens, a cap too big for her head. Disoriented, the girl turned around and around and around. She began to climb the snow mountain that blocked her from the street. But she was so weak. Halfway up, she’d slip back down. She’d try again, digging her feet deeper into the drift. Mathilde held her breath each time, let it out when the girl fell. She thought of a cockroach in a wineglass, trying to climb up the smooth sides. When Mathilde looked across the street at a long brick apartment complex taking up the whole block, ornate in its 1920s style, she saw, in scattered windows, three women watching the little girl’s struggles. Mathilde watched the women as they watched the girl. One was laughing over her bare shoulder at someone in the room, flushed with sex. One was elderly, drinking her tea. The third, sallow and pinched, had crossed her skinny arms and was pursing her lips. At last, the girl, exhausted, slid down and rested, her face against the snow. Mathilde was sure she was crying. When Mathilde looked up again, the woman with crossed arms was staring angrily through all the glass and cold and snow directly at her. Mathilde startled, sure she’d been invisible. The woman disappeared. She reappeared on the sidewalk in inside clothes, tweedy and thin. She chucked her body into the snowdrift in front of the apartment building, crossed the street, grabbed the girl by the mittens and swung her over the mountain. Carried her across the street and did it again. Both mother and daughter were powdered with white when they went inside. Long after they were gone, Mathilde thought of the woman. What she was imagining when she saw her little girl fall and fall and fall. She wondered at the kind of anger that would crumple your heart up so hard that you could watch a child struggle and fail and weep for so long, without moving to help. Mothers, Mathilde had always known, were people who abandoned you to struggle alone. It occurred to her then that life was conical in shape, the past broadening beyond the sharp point of the lived moment. The more life you had, the more the base expanded, so that the wounds and treasons that were nearly imperceptible when they happened stretched like tiny dots on a balloon slowly blown up. A speck on the slender child grows into a gross deformity in the adult, inescapable, ragged at the edges. A

Cap’n don’t like us tellin’ tales,” another man added. “That’s just ‘round his girl, is all,” the storyteller replied. Camille ceased breathing and widened her eyes. They were right about her father banning such rubbish aboard his ships, but she’d never known she was the reason for it. Why did he feel the need to protect her from them? The few parts of stories she had managed to overhear were entertaining but obvious malarkey to scare young sailors ut of their wits. “If he thinks she’s too fine for them, he shouldn’t bring her along,” Lucius said, his sneer reaching through to his tone of voice. “This is her last time, ain’t it?” another sailor asked. Her stomach cramped at the unwelcome reminder. “If it is, I wager it’ll be Kildare’s, too. He won’t stick ‘round no more,” another chuckled. Camille’s ears perked at Oscar’s name, then reddened at the sailor’s implication that Oscar was there only for her. It was absurd. “Good,” Lucius replied. “Who will be our new first mate?” What were they going on about? Oscar was a perfect first mate. Her father had groomed him for it. Oscar couldn’t just…leave. “Well, it won’t be you, Drake. You can’t even make a shroud knot!” The sailors in the fo’c’sle burst out in laughter. Grabbing her chance to leave, Camille took off down the corridor until their laughter faded with the sighs of the ship.

Images of people in the Middle East dressing like Westerners, spending like Westerners, that is what the voters watching TV here at home want to see. That is a visible sign that we really are winning the war of ideas—the struggle between consumption and economic growth, and religious tradition and economic stagnation. I thought, why are those children coming onto the streets more and more often? It’s not anything we have done, is it? It’s not any speeches we have made, or countries we have invaded, or new constitutions we have written, or sweets we have handed out to children, or football matches between soldiers and the locals. It’s because they, too, watch TV. They watch TV and see how we live here in the West. They see children their own age driving sports cars. They see teenagers like them, instead of living in monastic frustration until someone arranges their marriages, going out with lots of different girls, or boys. They see them in bed with lots of different girls and boys. They watch them in noisy bars, bottles of lager upended over their mouths, getting happy, enjoying the privilege of getting drunk. They watch them roaring out support or abuse at football matches. They see them getting on and off planes, flying from here to there without restriction and without fear, going on endless holidays, shopping, lying in the sun. Especially, they see them shopping: buying clothes and PlayStations, buying iPods, video phones, laptops, watches, digital cameras, shoes, trainers, baseball caps. Spending money, of which there is always an unlimited supply, in bars and restaurants, hotels and cinemas. These children of the West are always spending. They are always restless, happy and with unlimited access to cash. I realised, with a flash of insight, that this was what was bringing these Middle Eastern children out on the streets. I realised that they just wanted to be like us. Those children don’t want to have to go to the mosque five times a day when they could be hanging out with their friends by a bus shelter, by a phone booth or in a bar. They don’t want their families to tell them who they can and can’t marry. They might very well not want to marry at all and just have a series of partners. I mean, that’s what a lot of people do. It is no secret, after that serial in the Daily Mail, that that is what I do. I don’t necessarily need the commitment. Why should they not have the same choices as me? They want the freedom to fly off for their holidays on easy Jet. I know some will say that what a lot of them want is just one square meal a day or the chance of a drink of clean water, but on the whole the poor aren’t the ones on the street and would not be my target audience. They aren’t going to change anything, otherwise why are they so poor? The ones who come out on the streets are the ones who have TVs. They’ve seen how we live, and they want to spend.

I don't know just where I'm going But I'm goin' to try for the kingdom if I can 'Cause it makes me feel like I'm a man When I put a spike into my vein Then I tell you things aren't quite the same When I'm rushing on my run And I feel just like Jesus' son And I guess I just don't know And I guess that I just don't know I have made very big decision I'm goin' to try to nullify my life 'Cause when the blood begins to flow When it shoots up the dropper's neck When I'm closing in on death You can't help me not you guys All you sweet girls with all your sweet talk You can all go take a walk And I guess I just don't know And I guess I just don't know I wish that I was born a thousand years ago I wish that I'd sailed the darkened seas On a great big clipper ship Going from this land here to that I put on a sailor's suit and cap Away from the big city Where a man cannot be free Of all the evils in this town And of himself and those around Oh, and I guess I just don't know Oh, and I guess I just don't know Heroin, be the death of me Heroin, it's my wife and it's my life Because a mainer to my vein Leads to a center in my head And then I'm better off than dead When the smack begins to flow Then I really don't care anymore About all the Jim-Jims in this town And everybody putting everybody else down And all of the politicians makin' crazy sounds All the dead bodies piled up in mounds, yeah Wow, that heroin is in my blood And the blood is in my head Yeah, thank God that I'm good as dead Ooohhh, thank your God that I'm not aware And thank God that I just don't care And I guess I just don't know And I guess I just don't know - Heroin

By the by, will you be attending the Shewsbury ball Friday evening?” “I shall, yes.” It would be her first. “Will you?” His smile turned flirtatious. “I plan to now.” Rose blushed like a young girl, even though she knew Eve was behind her probably rolling her eyes. She would definitely wear the Worth gown her mother suggested. “Then I suppose I will see you there.” “I hope you will honor me with the first waltz?” Gracious, he certainly wasted no time! But Rose knew better than to have any expectations where he was concerned. Grey might not want her, but she wasn’t ready to set her cap on the first man to show interest in her. “If you wish to dance with me, I have no desire to disappoint you.” Who was the flirt now? Kellan bowed over her hand, brushing his lips across her gloved knuckles. “I shall count the days until then. Good day, Lady Rose. Lady Eve.” “Good day, Mr. Maxwell.” Pleased with him as well as herself, Rose watched him walk away, but took pains not to let her contentment show. It would only give the gossips something to twitter over, and she knew better than that. “Promise me you won’t fall victim to his charms, Rose,” Eve murmured near her ear. “You needn’t worry, Eve,” she replied, patting her friend’s hand. “I’m not the green girl I once was.” And that was truth as well, because the girl she once was never would have been so suddenly sure of a man’s interest. Nor would she consider using that interest to her own advantage-not in any harmful way, of course. She may no longer be green, but she wasn’t an “arse” as Eve so eloquently put it. But still, if Grey didn’t want her, then he wouldn’t mind if someone else did. Would he?

I work as fast as I can. Binah will come soon looking for me. It’s Mother, however, who descends the back steps into the yard. Binah and the other house slaves are clumped behind her, moving with cautious, synchronized steps as if they’re a single creature, a centipede crossing an unprotected space. I sense the shadow that hovers over them in the air, some devouring dread, and I crawl back into the green-black gloom of the tree. The slaves stare at Mother’s back, which is straight and without give. She turns and admonishes them. “You are lagging. Quickly now, let us be done with this.” As she speaks, an older slave, Rosetta, is dragged from the cow house, dragged by a man, a yard slave. She fights, clawing at his face. Mother watches, impassive. He ties Rosetta’s hands to the corner column of the kitchen house porch. She looks over her shoulder and begs. Missus, please. Missus. Missus. Please. She begs even as the man lashes her with his whip. Her dress is cotton, a pale yellow color. I stare transfixed as the back of it sprouts blood, blooms of red that open like petals. I cannot reconcile the savagery of the blows with the mellifluous way she keens or the beauty of the roses coiling along the trellis of her spine. Someone counts the lashes—is it Mother? Six, seven. The scourging continues, but Rosetta stops wailing and sinks against the porch rail. Nine, ten. My eyes look away. They follow a black ant traveling the far reaches beneath the tree—the mountainous roots and forested mosses, the endless perils—and in my head I say the words I fashioned earlier. Boy Run. Girl Jump. Sarah Go. Thirteen. Fourteen . . . I bolt from the shadows, past the man who now coils his whip, job well done, past Rosetta hanging by her hands in a heap. As I bound up the back steps into the house, Mother calls to me, and Binah reaches to scoop me up, but I escape them, thrashing along the main passage, out the front door, where I break blindly for the wharves. I don’t remember the rest with clarity, only that I find myself wandering across the gangplank of a sailing vessel, sobbing, stumbling over a turban of rope. A kind man with a beard and a dark cap asks what I want. I plead with him, Sarah Go. Binah chases me, though I’m unaware of her until she pulls me into her arms and coos, “Poor Miss Sarah, poor Miss Sarah.” Like a decree, a proclamation, a prophecy. When I arrive home, I am a muss of snot, tears, yard dirt, and harbor filth. Mother holds me against her, rears back and gives me an incensed shake, then clasps me again. “You must promise never to run away again. Promise me.” I want to. I try to. The words are on my tongue—the rounded lumps of them, shining like the marbles beneath the tree. “Sarah!” she demands. Nothing comes. Not a sound. I remained mute for a week. My words seemed sucked into the cleft between my collar bones. I rescued them by degrees, by praying, bullying and wooing. I came to speak again, but with an odd and mercurial form of stammer. I’d never been a fluid speaker, even my first spoken words had possessed a certain belligerent quality, but now there were ugly, halting gaps between my sentences, endless seconds when the words cowered against my lips and people averted their eyes. Eventually, these horrid pauses began to come and go according to their own mysterious whims. They might plague me for weeks and then remain away months, only to return again as abruptly as they left.

An old man wearing a red seed cap was saying, "Little lady, one day you'll remember the days people told you that you had nice legs as a good memory." Adam braced for the explosion. It was nails and dynamite. "Good--memory? Oh, I wish I were as ignorant as you! What happiness! There are girls who kill themselves over negative body image and you--" "Is there a problem here?" Adam broke in. The man seemed relieved. People were always pleased to see clean, muted Adam, the deferential Southern voice of reason. "Your girlfriend's quite a firecracker." Adam stared at the man. Blue stared at Adam. He wanted to tell her it wasn't worth it--that he'd grown up with this sort of man and knew they were untrainable--but then she'd throw the thermos at Adam's head and probably slap the guy in the mouth. It was amazing that she and Ronan didn't get along better, because they were different brands of the same impossible stuff. "Sir," Adam started--Blue's eyebrows spiked--"I think maybe your mama didn't teach you how to talk to women." The old man shook his head at Adam, like in pity. Adam added, "And she's not my girlfriend." Blue flashed him a brilliant look of approval, and then she got into the car with a dramatic door slam Ronan would have approved of. "Look, kid," the old man started. Adam interrupted, "Your fuel door's open, by the way." He climbed back into his little, shitty car, the one Ronan called the Hondayota. He felt heroic for no good reason. Blue simmered righteously as they pulled out of the station. For a few moments, there was nothing but the labored sounds of the little car's breathing. Then Noah said, "You do have nice legs, though." Blue swung at him. A helpless laugh escaped Adam, and she hit his shoulder too.

Then she bent her head over at the waist and tossed her head around to separate the curls. The elevator stopped and she heard the door open. She straightened up to find some big guy in a ball cap and sunglasses right in her face, charging into the elevator before she could even get out of it. He had both hands full of carry-out bags—Mexican food, judging from the smell. She looked at them, her mouth watering. Yep. Enrique’s. The best in town. He whirled around to punch the door-close button. “Hey,” she said. “I’m getting off here.” Some girl outside in the lobby yelled, “We know it’s you, Chase. You shouldn’t lie to us.” Startled, Elle looked at the guy’s face and saw, just before he reached for her, that it really was Chase Lomax in ragged shorts and flip-flops. He grabbed her up off her feet and bent his head. Found her mouth with his. “Wait for us,” another girl yelled. The sound of running feet echoed off the marble floor, slid to a stop. “Oh, no!” Kissing her, without so much as a “Hi, there, Elle.” Burning her up. She tried to struggle but he had both her arms pinned to her sides. And suddenly she wanted to stay right where she was forever because the shock was wearing off and she was starting to feel. A lot more than she ever had before. The door slid closed. The girls began banging on it. “We know your room number, Chase, honey,” they yelled. “See you there.” Loud giggles. “We’ll show you a real good time.” The elevator moved up, the voices faded away. But Chase kept on kissing her. She had to make him stop it. Right now. Who did he think he was, anyway? Somebody who could send lightning right through her whole body, that’s who. Lightning so strong it shook her to her toes. He had to stop this now. But she couldn’t move any part of her body. Except her lips. And her tongue . . . When he finally let her go she pulled back and away, fighting to get a handle on her breathing. “What’s the matter?” he demanded. Her blood rushed through her so fast it made her dizzy. “You’re asking me? It’s more like, what’s the matter with you? How’d you get the idea you could get away with kissing me like that without even bothering to say hello?” She touched her lips. They were still on fire. “You have got a helluva nerve, Chase Lomax.” He grinned at her as he took off his shades. He hung them in the neck of his huge, baggy T-shirt that had a bucking bull and rider with Git’R’Done written above it. He wore ragged denim shorts and flip-flops, for God’s sake. Chase Lomax was known for always being starched and ironed, custom-booted and hatted. “I asked if you’re all right because you were bent over double shaking your head when the doors opened,” he said. “Like you were in pain or something.” “I was drying my hair.” He stared, then burst out laughing. “Oh, well, then.” His laugh was contagious but she wouldn’t let herself join in. He could not get away with this scot-free. He’d shaken her up pretty good. “Oh. I see. You thought I needed help, so you just grabbed me and kissed me senseless. Is that how you treat somebody you think’s in pain?” He grinned that slow, charming grin of his again. “It made you feel better. Didn’t it?” He held her gaze and wouldn’t let it go. She must be a sight. She could feel heat in her cheeks, so her face must be red. Plus she was gasping, trying to slow her breathing. And her heart-beat. “You nearly scared me to death to try to get rid of those girls. And it was all wasted. They’re coming to your room.” Something flashed deep in his brown eyes. “Now you’ve hurt my feelings. I don’t think it was wasted,” he drawled. “I liked that kiss.

They've never been able to ignore you, Ma'am." "I made damn sure they couldn't. I never let them or anyone tell me what to do, except where Peter was concerned." She sighed, her weak chest rising and falling beneath the teal hospital down. "I'd trade my diamonds for a cigarette." Vera reached into her purse and pulled out a package of Gigantes she'd purchased at a tobacconist shop on the way to the hospital. She removed the cellophane wrapper and handed it to the Princess, the ability to anticipate Her Royal Highness's needs never having left her, even after all these years. The Princess didn't thank her, but the delight in her blue eyes when she put one in the good side of her mouth and allowed Vera to light it was thanks enough. The Princess struggled to close her lips around the base, revealing the depths of her weakness but also her strength. She refused to be denied her pleasure, even if it took some time to bring her lips together enough to inhale. Pure bliss came over her when she did before she exhaled. "I don't suppose you brought anything to drink?" "As a matter of fact, I did." Vera took the small bottle of whiskey she'd been given on the plane and held it up. "It isn't Famous Grouse, I'm afraid." "I don't care what it is." She snatched the plastic cup off the bedside table and held it up. "Pour." Vera twisted off the cap and drained the small bottle into the cup. The Princess held it up, whiskey in one hand, the cigarette in the other, and nodded to Vera. "Cheers." She drank with a rapture equal to the one she'd shown with the cigarette, sinking back into the pillows to enjoy the forbidden luxuries. "It reminds me of when we used to get drinks at the 400 Club after a Royal Command Film Performance or some other dry event. Nothing ever tasted so good as that first whiskey after all the hot air of those stuffy officials." "We could work up quite a thirst, couldn't we, Ma'am?" "We sure could." She enjoyed the cigarette, letting out the smoke slowly to savour it before offering Vera a lopsided smile. "We had fun back then, didn't we, Mrs. Lavish?

Isn’t he a lovely sight?” said Tweedledum. Alice couldn’t say honestly that he was. He had a tall red night-cap on, with a tassel, and he was lying crumpled up into a sort of untidy heap, and snoring loud—“fit to snore his head off!” as Tweedledum remarked. “I’m afraid he’ll catch cold with lying on the damp grass,” said Alice, who was a very thoughtful little girl. “He’s dreaming now,” said Tweedledee: “and what do you think he’s dreaming about?” Alice said “Nobody can guess that.” “Why, about you!” Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly. “And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you’d be?” “Where I am now, of course,” said Alice. “Not you!” Tweedledee retorted contemptuously. “You’d be nowhere. Why, you’re only a sort of thing in his dream!” “If that there King was to wake,” added Tweedledum, “you’d go out—bang!—just like a candle!” “I shouldn’t!” Alice exclaimed indignantly. “Besides, if I’m only a sort of thing in his dream, what are you, I should like to know?” “Ditto,” said Tweedledum. “Ditto, ditto!” cried Tweedledee. He shouted this so loud that Alice couldn’t help saying, “Hush! You’ll be waking him, I’m afraid, if you make so much noise.” “Well, it’s no use your talking about waking him,” said Tweedledum, “when you’re only one of the things in his dream. You know very well you’re not real.” “I am real!” said Alice, and began to cry. “You won’t make yourself a bit realler by crying,” Tweedledee remarked: “there’s nothing to cry about.” “If I wasn’t real,” Alice said—half-laughing through her tears, it all seemed so ridiculous—“I shouldn’t be able to cry.” “I hope you don’t suppose those are real tears?” Tweedledum interrupted in a tone of great contempt. “I know they’re talking nonsense,” Alice thought to herself: “and it’s foolish to cry about it.” So she brushed away her tears, and went on as cheerfully as she could, “At any rate I’d better be getting out of the wood, for really it’s coming on very dark. Do you think it’s going to rain?” Tweedledum spread a large umbrella over himself and his brother, and looked up into it. “No, I don’t think it is,” he said: “at least—not under here. Nohow.” “But it may rain outside?” “It may—if it chooses,” said Tweedledee: “we’ve no objection. Contrariwise.

EVEN BEFORE HE GOT ELECTROCUTED, Jason was having a rotten day. He woke in the backseat of a school bus, not sure where he was, holding hands with a girl he didn’t know. That wasn’t necessarily the rotten part. The girl was cute, but he couldn’t figure out who she was or what he was doing there. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, trying to think. A few dozen kids sprawled in the seats in front of him, listening to iPods, talking, or sleeping. They all looked around his age…fifteen? Sixteen? Okay, that was scary. He didn’t know his own age. The bus rumbled along a bumpy road. Out the windows, desert rolled by under a bright blue sky. Jason was pretty sure he didn’t live in the desert. He tried to think back…the last thing he remembered… The girl squeezed his hand. “Jason, you okay?” She wore faded jeans, hiking boots, and a fleece snowboarding jacket. Her chocolate brown hair was cut choppy and uneven, with thin strands braided down the sides. She wore no makeup like she was trying not to draw attention to herself, but it didn’t work. She was seriously pretty. Her eyes seemed to change color like a kaleidoscope—brown, blue, and green. Jason let go of her hand. “Um, I don’t—” In the front of the bus, a teacher shouted, “All right, cupcakes, listen up!” The guy was obviously a coach. His baseball cap was pulled low over his hair, so you could just see his beady eyes. He had a wispy goatee and a sour face, like he’d eaten something moldy. His buff arms and chest pushed against a bright orange polo shirt. His nylon workout pants and Nikes were spotless white. A whistle hung from his neck, and a megaphone was clipped to his belt. He would’ve looked pretty scary if he hadn’t been five feet zero. When he stood up in the aisle, one of the students called, “Stand up, Coach Hedge!” “I heard that!” The coach scanned the bus for the offender. Then his eyes fixed on Jason, and his scowl deepened. A jolt went down Jason’s spine. He was sure the coach knew he didn’t belong there. He was going to call Jason out, demand to know what he was doing on the bus—and Jason wouldn’t have a clue what to say. But Coach Hedge looked away and cleared his throat. “We’ll arrive in five minutes! Stay with your partner. Don’t lose your worksheet. And if any of you precious little cupcakes causes any trouble on this trip, I will personally send you back to campus the hard way.

it died away, Stu said: “This wasn’t on the agenda, but I wonder if we could start by singing the National Anthem. I guess you folks remember the words and the tune.” There was that ruffling, shuffling sound of people getting to their feet. Another pause as everyone waited for someone else to start. Then a girl’s sweet voice rose in the air, solo for only the first three syllables: “Oh, say can—” It was Frannie’s voice, but for a moment it seemed to Larry to be underlaid by another voice, his own, and the place was not Boulder but upstate Vermont and the day was July 4, the Republic was two hundred and fourteen years old, and Rita lay dead in the tent behind him, her mouth filled with green puke and a bottle of pills in her stiffening hand. A chill of gooseflesh passed over him and suddenly he felt that they were being watched, watched by something that could, in the words of that old song by The Who, see for miles and miles and miles. Something awful and dark and alien. For just a moment he felt an urge to run from this place, just run and never stop. This was no game they were playing here. This was serious business; killing business. Maybe worse. Then other voices joined in. “—can you see, by the dawn’s early light,” and Lucy was singing, holding his hand, crying again, and others were crying, most of them were crying, crying for what was lost and bitter, the runaway American dream, chrome-wheeled, fuel-injected, and stepping out over the line, and suddenly his memory was not of Rita, dead in the tent, but of he and his mother at Yankee Stadium—it was September 29, the Yankees were only a game and a half behind the Red Sox, and all things were still possible. There were fifty-five thousand people in the Stadium, all standing, the players in the field with their caps over their hearts, Guidry on the mound, Rickey Henderson was standing in deep left field (“—by the twilight’s last gleaming—”), and the light-standards were on in the purple gloaming, moths and night-fliers banging softly against them, and New York was around them, teeming, city of night and light. Larry joined the singing too, and when it was done and the applause rolled out once more, he was crying a bit himself. Rita was gone. Alice Underwood was gone. New York was gone. America was gone. Even if they could defeat Randall Flagg, whatever they might make would never be the same as that world of dark streets and bright dreams.

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' lazy at the sea, There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me; For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say: "Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!" Come you back to Mandalay, Where the old Flotilla lay: Can't you 'ear their paddles chunkin' from Rangoon to Mandalay ? On the road to Mandalay, Where the flyin'-fishes play, An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay! 'Er petticoat was yaller an' 'er little cap was green, An' 'er name was Supi-yaw-lat - jes' the same as Theebaw's Queen, An' I seed her first a-smokin' of a whackin' white cheroot, An' a-wastin' Christian kisses on an 'eathen idol's foot: Bloomin' idol made o' mud Wot they called the Great Gawd Budd Plucky lot she cared for idols when I kissed 'er where she stud! On the road to Mandalay... When the mist was on the rice-fields an' the sun was droppin' slow, She'd git 'er little banjo an' she'd sing "Kulla-lo-lo! With 'er arm upon my shoulder an' 'er cheek agin my cheek We useter watch the steamers an' the hathis pilin' teak. Elephints a-pilin' teak In the sludgy, squdgy creek, Where the silence 'ung that 'eavy you was 'arf afraid to speak! On the road to Mandalay... But that's all shove be'ind me - long ago an' fur away An' there ain't no 'busses runnin' from the Bank to Mandalay; An' I'm learnin' 'ere in London what the ten-year soldier tells: "If you've 'eard the East a-callin', you won't never 'eed naught else." No! you won't 'eed nothin' else But them spicy garlic smells, An' the sunshine an' the palm-trees an' the tinkly temple-bells; On the road to Mandalay... I am sick o' wastin' leather on these gritty pavin'-stones, An' the blasted English drizzle wakes the fever in my bones; Tho' I walks with fifty 'ousemaids outer Chelsea to the Strand, An' they talks a lot o' lovin', but wot do they understand? Beefy face an' grubby 'and - Law! wot do they understand? I've a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land! On the road to Mandalay... Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst, Where there aren't no Ten Commandments an' a man can raise a thirst; For the temple-bells are callin', an' it's there that I would be By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea; On the road to Mandalay, Where the old Flotilla lay, With our sick beneath the awnings when we went to Mandalay! O the road to Mandalay, Where the flyin'-fishes play, An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay !

cap to scratch his bald head. ‘Well, you won’t miss the veg because I’ll be bringing you some every week now. I’ve always got plenty left over and I’d rather give it to you than see it waste.’ He gave a rumbling laugh. ‘I caught that young Tommy Barton digging potatoes from Percy’s plot this mornin’. Give ’im a cuff round ’is ear but I let him take what he’d dug. Poor little bugger’s only tryin’ to keep his ma from starvin’; ain’t ’is fault ’is old man got banged up for robbin’, is it?’ Tilly Barton, her two sons Tommy and Sam and her husband, lived almost opposite the Pig & Whistle. Mulberry Lane cut across from Bell Lane and ran adjacent to Spitalfields Market, and the folk of the surrounding lanes were like a small community, almost a village in the heart of London’s busy East End. Tilly and her husband had been good customers for Peggy until he lost his job on the Docks. It had come as a shock when he’d been arrested for trying to rob a little corner post office and Peggy hadn’t seen Tilly to talk to since; she’d assumed it was because the woman was feeling ashamed of what her husband had done. ‘No, of course not.’ Peggy smiled at him. A wisp of her honey-blonde hair had fallen across her face, despite all her efforts to sweep it up under a little white cap she wore for cooking. ‘I didn’t realise Tilly Barton was in such trouble. I’ll take her a pie over later – she won’t be offended, will she?’ ‘No one in their right mind would be offended by you, Peggy love.’ ‘Thank you, Jim. Would you like a cup of coffee and a slice of apple pie?’ ‘Don’t mind a slice of that pie, but I’ll take it for my docky down the allotment if that’s all right?’ Peggy assured him it was and wrapped a generous slice of her freshly cooked pie in greaseproof paper. He took it and left with a smile and a promise to see her next week just as her husband entered the kitchen. ‘Who was that?’ Laurence asked as he saw the back of Jim walking away. ‘Jim Stillman, he brought the last of the stuff from Percy’s allotment.’ Peggy’s eyes brimmed and Laurence frowned. ‘I don’t know what you’re upset for, Peggy. Percy was well over eighty. He’d had a good life – and it wasn’t even as if he was your father…’ ‘I know. He was a lot older than Mum but…Percy was a good stepfather to me, and wonderful to Mum when she was so ill after we lost Walter.’ Peggy’s voice faltered, because it still hurt her that her younger brother had died in the Great War at the tender age of seventeen. The news had almost destroyed their mother and Peggy thought of those dark days as the worst of her

They stood around a bleeding stump of a man lying on the ground. His right arm and left leg had been chopped off. It was inconceivable how, with his remaining arm and leg, he had crawled to the camp. The chopped-off arm and leg were tied in terrible bleeding chunks onto his back with a small wooden board attached to them; a long inscription on it said, with many words of abuse, that the atrocity was in reprisal for similar atrocities perpetrated by such and such a Red unit—a unit that had no connection with the Forest Brotherhood. It also said that the same treatment would be meted out to all the partisans unless, by a given date, they submitted and gave up their arms to the representatives of General Vitsyn’s army corps. Fainting repeatedly from loss of blood, the dying man told them in a faltering voice of the tortures and atrocities perpetrated by Vitsyn’s investigating and punitive squads. His own sentence of death had been allegedly commuted; instead of hanging him, they had cut off his arm and leg in order to send him into the camp and strike terror among the partisans. They had carried him as far as the outposts of the camp, where they had put him down and ordered him to crawl, urging him on by shooting into the air. He could barely move his lips. To make out his almost unintelligible stammering, the crowd around him bent low. He was saying: “Be on your guard, comrades. He has broken through.” “Patrols have gone out in strength. There’s a big battle going on. We’ll hold him.” “There’s a gap. He wants to surprise you. I know. ... I can’t go on, men. I am spitting blood. I’ll die in a moment.” “Rest a bit. Keep quiet.—Can’t you see it’s bad for him, you heartless beasts!” The man started again: “He went to work on me, the devil. He said: You will bathe in your own blood until you tell me who you are. And how was I to tell him, a deserter is just what I am? I was running from him to you.” “You keep saying ‘he.’ Who was it that got to work on you?” “Let me just get my breath. ... I’ll tell you. Hetman, Bekeshin. Colonel, Strese. Vitsyn’s men. You don’t know out here what it’s like. The whole town is groaning. They boil people alive. They cut strips out of them. They take you by the scruff of the neck and push you inside, you don’t know where you are, it’s pitch black. You grope about—you are in a cage, inside a freight car. There are more than forty people in the cage, all in their underclothes. From time to time they open the door and grab whoever comes first—out he goes. As you grab a chicken to cut its throat. I swear to God. Some they hang, some they shoot, some they question. They beat you to shreds, they put salt on the wounds, they pour boiling water on you. When you vomit or relieve yourself they make you eat it. As for children and women—O God!” The unfortunate was at his last gasp. He cried out and died without finishing the sentence. Somehow they all knew it at once and took off their caps and crossed themselves. That night, the news of a far more terrible incident flew around the camp. Pamphil had been in the crowd surrounding the dying man. He had seen him, heard his words, and read the threatening inscription on the board. His constant fear for his family in the event of his own death rose to a new climax. In his imagination he saw them handed over to slow torture, watched their faces distorted by pain, and heard their groans and cries for help. In his desperate anguish—to forestall their future sufferings and to end his own—he killed them himself, felling his wife and three children with that same, razor-sharp ax that he had used to carve toys for the two small girls and the boy, who had been his favorite. The astonishing thing was that he did not kill himself immediately afterward.

joke around—nothing serious—as I work to get my leg back to where it was. Two weeks later, I’m in an ankle-to-hip leg brace and hobbling around on crutches. The brace can’t come off for another six weeks, so my parents lend me their townhouse in New York City and Lucien hires me an assistant to help me out around the house. Some guy named Trevor. He’s okay, but I don’t give him much to do. I want to regain my independence as fast as I can and get back out there for Planet X. Yuri, my editor, is griping that he needs me back and I’m more than happy to oblige. But I still need to recuperate, and I’m bored as hell cooped up in the townhouse. Some buddies of mine from PX stop by and we head out to a brunch place on Amsterdam Street my assistant sometimes orders from. Deacon, Logan, Polly, Jonesy and I take a table in Annabelle’s Bistro, and settle in for a good two hours, running our waitress ragged. She’s a cute little brunette doing her best to stay cheerful for us while we give her a hard time with endless coffee refills, loud laughter, swearing, and general obnoxiousness. Her nametag says Charlotte, and Deacon calls her “Sweet Charlotte” and ogles and teases her, sometimes inappropriately. She has pretty eyes, I muse, but otherwise pay her no mind. I have my leg up on a chair in the corner, leaning back, as if I haven’t a care in the world. And I don’t. I’m going to make a full recovery and pick up my life right where I left off. Finally, a manager with a severe hairdo and too much makeup, politely, yet pointedly, inquires if there’s anything else we need, and we take the hint. We gather our shit and Deacon picks up the tab. We file out, through the maze of tables, and I’m last, hobbling slowly on crutches. I’m halfway out when I realize I left my Yankees baseball cap on the table. I return to get it and find the waitress staring at the check with tears in her eyes. She snaps the black leather book shut when she sees me and hurriedly turns away. “Forget something?” she asks with false cheer and a shaky smile. “My hat,” I say. She’s short and I’m tall. I tower over her. “Did Deacon leave a shitty tip? He does that.” “Oh no, no, I mean…it’s fine,” she says, turning away to wipe her eyes. “I’m so sorry. I just…um, kind of a rough month. You know how it is.” She glances me up and down in my expensive jeans and designer shirt. “Or maybe you don’t.” The waitress realizes what she said, and another round of apologies bursts out of her as she begins stacking our dirty dishes. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry. Really. I have this bad habit…blurting. I don’t know why I said that. Anyway, um…” I laugh, and fish into my back pocket for my wallet. “Don’t worry about it. And take this. For your trouble.” I offer her forty dollars and her eyes widen. Up close, her eyes are even prettier—large and luminous, but sad too. A blush turns her skin scarlet “Oh, no, I couldn’t. No, please. It’s fine, really.” She bustles even faster now, not looking at me. I shrug and drop the twenties on the table. “I hope your month improves.” She stops and stares at the money, at war with herself. “Okay. Thank you,” she says finally, her voice cracking. She takes the money and stuffs it into her apron. I feel sorta bad, poor girl. “Have a nice day, Charlotte,” I say, and start to hobble away. She calls after me, “I hope your leg gets better soon.” That was big of her, considering what ginormous bastards we’d been to her all morning. Or maybe she’s just doing her job. I wave a hand to her without looking back, and leave Annabelle’s. Time heals me. I go back to work. To Planet X. To the world and all its thrills and beauty. I don’t go back to my parents’ townhouse; hell I’m hardly in NYC anymore. I don’t go back to Annabelle’s and I never see—or think about—that cute waitress with the sad eyes ever again. “Fucking hell,” I whisper as the machine reads the last line of

Lucy glanced at him, sidelong. “Mr. Peretz, do I look any older now?” Pitar busied himself with the links of the necklace. He knew what he was hearing. One of those notorious female jabs that made male life so hazardous. This provocation had no proper answer. To say “no” was to accuse Lucy of still being a callow girl of seventeen. This meant that ten years of their marriage were capped with an insult. But to reply “yes” to Lucy, was to state that she had, yes, visibly aged – what a crass mis-step that would be! Lucy would swiftly demand to know what dark threat had wilted her beauty. Arsenical rock-dust fever? A vitamin imbalance in her skin?

EVEN BEFORE HE GOT ELECTROCUTED, Jason was having a rotten day. He woke in the backseat of a school bus, not sure where he was, holding hands with a girl he didn’t know. That wasn’t necessarily the rotten part. The girl was cute, but he couldn’t figure out who she was or what he was doing there. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, trying to think. A few dozen kids sprawled in the seats in front of him, listening to iPods, talking, or sleeping. They all looked around his age…fifteen? Sixteen? Okay, that was scary. He didn’t know his own age. The bus rumbled along a bumpy road. Out the windows, desert rolled by under a bright blue sky. Jason was pretty sure he didn’t live in the desert. He tried to think back…the last thing he remembered… The girl squeezed his hand. “Jason, you okay?” She wore faded jeans, hiking boots, and a fleece snowboarding jacket. Her chocolate brown hair was cut choppy and uneven, with thin strands braided down the sides. She wore no makeup like she was trying not to draw attention to herself, but it didn’t work. She was seriously pretty. Her eyes seemed to change color like a kaleidoscope—brown, blue, and green. Jason let go of her hand. “Um, I don’t—” In the front of the bus, a teacher shouted, “All right, cupcakes, listen up!” The guy was obviously a coach. His baseball cap was pulled low over his hair, so you could just see his beady eyes. He had a wispy goatee and a sour face, like he’d eaten something moldy. His buff arms and chest pushed against a bright orange polo shirt. His nylon workout pants and Nikes were spotless white. A whistle hung from his neck, and a megaphone was clipped to his belt. He would’ve looked pretty scary if he hadn’t been five feet zero. When he stood up in the aisle, one of the students called, “Stand up, Coach Hedge!” “I heard that!” The coach scanned the bus for the offender. Then his eyes fixed on Jason, and his scowl deepened. A jolt went down Jason’s spine. He was sure the coach knew he didn’t belong there. He was going to call Jason out, demand to know what he was doing on the bus—and Jason wouldn’t have a clue what to say. But Coach Hedge looked away and cleared his throat. “We’ll arrive in five minutes! Stay with your partner. Don’t lose your worksheet. And if any of you precious little cupcakes causes any trouble on this trip, I will personally send you

When he came out of the kitchen he saw her struggling out of her jacket, like maybe she was stiff or sore. The sight of it stopped him briefly and made him frown. She threw a look over her shoulder, as if she was caught doing something bad. Preacher put the food in front of her, his mind spinning. She was maybe five foot five and slight. She wore jeans and her curly brown hair was tucked through the back of the ball cap like a ponytail. She looked like a girl, but he guessed she was at least in her twenties. Maybe she’d been in a car accident, but it was more likely someone had smacked her around. The thought alone got him a little hot inside. “That looks great,” she said, accepting the soup. He went back behind the bar while she ate. She shoveled the soup in, smeared the bread with butter and ate it ravenously. Halfway through with her meal she gave him a sheepish, almost apologetic smile. It tore through him, that bruised face, split lip. Her hunger. When

And the winner is,” he sings. He waits, opening the folded piece of paper slowly, drawing out the suspense. I can barely hear him over my own heartbeat, which is thumping like crazy. Is it too late to back out? Shit. I don’t want to do this. “The winner is the person who guessed twelve hundred and forty-eight!” The crowd is silent, and all the participants look to one another. But then I hear a thump, thump, thump, thump as someone comes up the stairs onto the platform. I see the baseball cap before I see the rest of him, and I hope to God that’s Sean’s cap. But Sean didn’t even buy a ticket. Not a single one. Yet it’s his brown gaze that meets mine. It’s his baseball cap, and they are his tattoos. They’re his broad shoulders and his long strides that eat up the distance between us. He turns his hat backward and looks down at me. He stops with less than an inch to spare between us. “Congratulations,” I squeak out. “You didn’t even buy a ticket. How did you…?” “I bought one hundred and forty-two tickets, dummy,” he says. My heart trips a beat. “You did?” All he had to buy was one. I put the winning number on the piece of paper I gave him. He nods, and he takes my face in his hands. His thumbs draw little circles on my cheeks as his fingers thread into the hair at my temples. “You didn’t look at the paper I gave you….” My heart is pounding like mad. “What paper?” he asks. His smile is soft and inviting, and I want to fall into him. “The one you put in your pocket.” His brow furrows. “Never mind,” I say, breathless. He spent 142 dollars for a kiss he already owned in more ways than one. If I loved this man any more, it would be dangerous. He looks down into my eyes, not moving. He’s going to kiss me, right? “What’s the plan here?” “I’m going to kiss my girl,” he says, smiling at me. My breath hitches. “But you have to say yes, first.” He hasn’t let me go. He’s holding me tightly, forcing me to meet his eyes. “This isn’t going to be a one-time thing.” I can’t even think, and he wants me to commit? “It’s not,” I breathe. “You promise?” His gaze searches mine like he’s going to find the secrets to the universe there. “I swear on your life,” I say. He chuckles. “My life?” I nod. His eyebrows draw together. “Aren’t you supposed to swear on your own life?” “My life means nothing if you’re not in it.” His hands start to tremble against my face, and he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Logan’s brothers start to chant, “Kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss…,” and the crowd joins in. “You better kiss me,” I say, “or they’re going to get restless.” A tear rolls down my cheek, and he brushes it back with his thumb, his gaze soft and warm. His eyes open, and he leans closer to me. I step onto my tiptoes to get to him because I can’t wait one more second. He stops a breath away from me, just like he did in the room. He waits. “You have to close the distance,” he says to me. He’s making me choose. I fall into him and press my lips to his. He freezes. But then he starts to kiss me. And all the fireworks at the state fair couldn’t compare to the ones that go off in my head.

They told me exactly how it worked, the marketing of it. Our target market was always going to be young teenage girls, because boys are into sports, and they like buying jerseys and caps and so on, for baseball or football, things of that nature, whereas the girls are totally enthralled with the band. . . . They don’t have money, but they have access to a large supply of it: their aunts, uncles, grandmas, grandpas, who would spend money on them for a concert or merchandise sooner than they would spend it on themselves.

Diablos: the name given to the igniting of, and ignited, farts. Trevor Hickey is the undisputed master of this arcane and perilous art. The stakes could not be higher. Get the timing even slightly wrong and there will be consequences far more serious than singed trousers; the word backdraught clamours unspoken at the back of every spectator’s mind. Total silence now as, with an almost imperceptible tremble (entirely artificial, ‘just part of the show’ as Trevor puts it) his hand brings the match between his legs and – foom! a sound like the fabric of the universe being ripped in two, counterpointed by its opposite, a collective intake of breath, as from Trevor’s bottom proceeds a magnificent plume of flame – jetting out it’s got to be nearly three feet, they tell each other afterwards, a cold and beautiful purple-blue enchantment that for an instant bathes the locker room in unearthly light. No one knows quite what Trevor Hickey’s diet is, or his exercise regime; if you ask him about it, he will simply say that he has a gift, and having witnessed it, you would be hard-pressed to argue, although why God should have given him this gift in particular is less easy to say. But then, strange talents abound in the fourteen-year-old confraternity. As well as Trevor Hickey, ‘The Duke of Diablos’, you have people like Rory ‘Pins’ Moran, who on one occasion had fifty-eight pins piercing the epidermis of his left hand; GP O’Sullivan, able to simulate the noises of cans opening, mobile phones bleeping, pneumatic doors, etc., at least as well as the guy in Police Academy; Henry Lafayette, who is double-jointed and famously escaped from a box of jockstraps after being locked inside it by Lionel. These boys’ abilities are regarded quite as highly by their peers as the more conventional athletic and sporting kinds, as is any claim to physical freakishness, such as waggling ears (Mitchell Gogan), unusually high mucous production (Hector ‘Hectoplasm’ O’Looney), notable ugliness (Damien Lawlor) and inexplicably slimy, greenish hair (Vince Bailey). Fame in the second year is a surprisingly broad church; among the two-hundred-plus boys, there is scarcely anyone who does not have some ability or idiosyncrasy or weird body condition for which he is celebrated. As with so many things at this particular point in their lives, though, that situation is changing by the day. School, with its endless emphasis on conformity, careers, the Future, may be partly to blame, but the key to the shift in attitudes is, without a doubt, girls. Until recently the opinion of girls was of little consequence; now – overnight, almost – it is paramount; and girls have quite different, some would go so far as to say deeply conservative, criteria with regard to what constitutes a gift. They do not care how many golf balls you can fit in your mouth; they are unmoved by third nipples; they do not, most of them, consider mastery of Diablos to be a feather in your cap – even when you explain to them how dangerous it is, even when you offer to teach them how to do it themselves, an offer you have never extended to any of your classmates, who would actually pay big money for this expertise, or you could even call it lore – wait, come back!

inside. A few seconds later, a big black woman who resembled Monique in the movie, Precious came and opened the door. She had this dirty ass pink satin cap on her head and this dingy ass pajama gown.

This is nice. Two friends being friendly,” he said. Rolling my eyes, I sipped my drink and ignored his cocky smile. “How long has it been?” he asked, tapping my sandal with his boot. “The abstaining thing.” Crossing my arms under my tits, I tightened them and pushed up the girls for him to admire. I always loved teasing boys. “I bet you’ve banged a girl recently. Like I could probably smell her on you, if I got close enough,” I grumbled, remembering how he smelled like chocolate and I had a sweet tooth. “You’re likely crawling with germs.” Instead of finding offense, Vaughn watched me in a weird way. His lids lowered as the corners of his mouth lifted. A sly look on his face, Vaughn ran his tongue along his top teeth. “I have a system,” he said softly. “After I hook up with a random chick, I shower with a big bottle of Purell. One of those economy-sized ones.” Even smiling, I kicked his foot away from mine. “I’m a bath person myself. Just fill up the tub with really hot water then toss in a cap of bleach plus a few bubbles and I’m set.” “Gotta have bubbles,” he said in a deep low voice. “What are you doing?” Vaughn shook his head, yet his gaze held mine. “Just admiring your beautiful smile.” Rolling my eyes again, I sighed. “Lame.” “I know. I really do. I use that line a lot, but it’s true with you. That smile changes your face. Makes you less sex kitten and more angel.” “I’m no angel.” “What a relief. I don’t like good girls.” “I didn’t say I was bad.” Vaughn sucked at his lower lip and sized me up with those eyes. “You didn’t have to, kitten.” “Don’t call me that.” “Sugar?” he said, grinning brighter now. “Your sister didn’t like my nickname for her either.” “Why would you give my sister a nickname?” “Don’t be jealous. I like giving girls nicknames. Even girls I don’t want to spend time inside.” “I can’t believe those lines ever work.” “They don’t. Girls are drawn to my looks, not my personality.” Snorting, I begged myself to stop smiling. “And you’re proud of this fact?” “I’m proud of very little, pumpkin.” “Keep trying.

Lucia's abuela chortled, and her mother gave him a playful smack on the arm. But he could see both were pleased. They flanked him as if to escort him to the table. But before they could herd him in that direction, he politely asked permission to give Sanchia the present he'd brought. Identical curious looks sprang into each of the women's eyes, and they stepped back, but crowded behind him to watch the show. Pepe wove through the press of people to kneel before Sanchia and held out the dolly, wrapped in the colorful knitted blanket. Since receiving it, he hadn't peeled back the covering to see Senora Thompson's handiwork, and he was almost as curious as the child. With one finger, the girl traced a line of yellow yarn knitted into the blanket, as if she'd never seen anything so sunny. She looked up at her sister for permission to open the present. At Lucia's nod and encouraging smile, she slowly unwrapped the bundle. The baby lay in splendor, wearing a pink gown and a matching cap and booties. Wonder brightened the little girl's thin, solemn face. She whispered in Lucia's ear, too softly for Pepe to hear. But Lucia's gentle, "Si Sanchia" made her grab the doll to her chest and rock her back and forth.

And if by grace, then it cannot be based on works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace. —Romans 11:6 (NIV) I couldn’t help noticing something on the dashboard of the cab I was riding in this morning: a snapshot of a college grad with mortarboard and gown, holding a diploma, smiling proudly; maybe the driver’s son. “Congratulations,” I said. “Your son?” “No,” he answered, “that’s me.” Momentarily mortified, I found myself thinking, Tough luck, driving a cab with a college degree. I got a better look at the driver. Middle Eastern, middle-aged. Probably has a PhD in astrophysics back in his home country. “Well,” I said awkwardly, “congratulations all the same. That’s great.” “An education is the best thing this country has given me. I just got an accounting degree and pretty soon I will find a job in my field, God willing. But meanwhile I have a family to support. Want to see them?” “Sure.” He flipped open the glove box where there were pictures of two boys and a girl, all in caps and gowns, all recent grads of high school and college. “I try to set a good example for them,” he said with a laugh. “God willing, they will find good jobs too. Education is the key to everything.” As we pulled to the curb, I thought of my own family coming to this country and struggling to reach the American dream, just like this man and his family. I thought of all the opportunities I’d been blessed with and how I can take it all too much for granted at times. “It was an honor to ride in your cab,” I said, handing the driver his fare. “Have a good day, sir,” he replied. “I shall,” I said, “God willing.” Jesus, they called You “Rabbi,” which means teacher. This month please bless all those who have worked so hard and so long for that great key to the future, a diploma. —Edward Grinnan

I twisted my head to look at the girl.  With one hand she held a wide straw hat to her head.  The other held an umbrella drink in a curvy glass.  She wore big movie-star sunglasses, tall, a reddish-new tan.  White bikini bottoms.  No top.  Just boobies. “Uh . . . hi.” “Hi,” she said. Then there was this shirtless fat guy at her side.  He didn’t have a top either, but his boobies were harrier.  He was hot pink with sun burn, wore a new moustache like a smear of brown crayon.  His ball cap said Kiss the Captain.

to the girl. “Ha’penny,” he muttered. To me, he said, “I know why your nose is so long, Cap’n. You use it to poke into business ’tisn’t yours.” “True.” I touched the

He hadn’t just capped the shooter—he’d shot a little girl! Guilt would stitch this moment into his memory forever.

Drew winced. “My back hurts. What did you do to me in your front yard? One minute I was standing, then I was flat on my back in the grass.” “I swept the leg,” she said matter-of-factly. “But why?” “Why not? It’s the fastest way to get someone to the ground.” “But we were standing on your lawn.” “Exactly. We were on nice, soft grass. I would have wrestled you sooner, but it’s not safe on the pavement.” “Do you always wrestle with guys?” “Just the ones I like.” She tapped him on the nose. “Boop.” He tapped her right back. “Boop.” She asked, “Now that I’ve taught you to watch out for the leg sweep, what else can I do for you? Breakfast in bed? Pack you a bagged lunch for work today?” He checked the time on her alarm clock. “It’s Saturday, which is a light day, but I do have a few patients after lunch.” “What do you mean it’s a light day? You’re not fully booked? You must not be a very good dentist. Maybe I should get a second opinion on that cap you glued into my mouth all willy-nilly.” He dropped his jaw in mock outrage. “Not a very good dentist? Those are fighting words, you bad girl.” She raised her eyebrows. “Want to take this back out to the front lawn?” “I think we gave your neighbors enough of a show last night.” “True,” she said. “Plus, we already got grass stains all over one change of clothes.” He wrinkled his nose. “Grass stains.” He groaned. He leaned back, resting his head on Megan’s second pillow, where Muffins normally slept. The sea-foam-green linens were a perfect complement to his skin tone. His brown eyes were a rich chocolate with bright flecks and an inner ring that was nearly green. The sheets had been purchased to complement Muffins, with his orange fur and entirely green eyes, but they looked even better around Dr. Drew Morgan. Drew asked, “What are you thinking about?” He reached up to run his fingers through her tangled morning hair. She normally hated that, but it felt good when Drew did it. “I’m thinking that you look really good in my sheets. You look good in sea-foam green.” “Thanks.” He grinned. “I can’t wait to see how you look in my bed.” “You think you’re going to get me into your bed?” “Sure. I know how it’s done. You just sweep the leg.” “I shouldn’t have told you all my secrets.” Muffins returned and situated himself between them for a bath. Drew propped himself up on one elbow and petted the cat. “So what do I have to do to get you to my place in the first place?” “Reverse psychology works well on me. You could tell me to never come over. You could ban me from your house.” He chuckled. “Whatever you do, don’t show up naked under a trench coat.” “What makes you think I’d show up naked in a trench coat?” “You’re a wild girl. Exactly what I need right now.” “You need me? Are we talking about, like, a medical type of emergency?” “You tell me.” He scooped up Muffins, placed him on the chair next to the bed, and pulled Megan close to him.

He put one of his heavy crystal perfume bottles into her hand. A big one with an old-fashioned silk puffer spray. She looked at the label and saw it wasn't the one she'd sprayed on her wrist, but the first cap she'd smelled and hadn't liked so much. It was called the Darkest Hour. "I know you like Half Past Eight more," said Guy. "You think you're not a spicy-orientals girl, with your Celtic blood and your dry skin; I read your blog, I know about your fetish for chypre fragrances. It's the oakmoss and patchouli combo alongside the burned lemon you're responding to in Half Past Eight." Polly had to laugh. "Bang to rights," she said. "Halfway to chypre paradise...

What's that, mister?" "That's the green for the gentleman's coat. No--don't pinch it, or you'll get it all over you. Yes, you can put the cap on. Yes, that's to keep it from drying up. Yes, put it back in the box.... That's yellow. No, I know there isn't any yellow in the picture, but I want it to mix with the green to make it brighter. You'll see. Don't forget the cap. What? Oh, anywhere in the box. White--yes, it's a big tube, isn't it? You see, you have to put a little white into most of the colours--why? Well, they wouldn't come right without it. You'll see when I do the sky. What's that? You want the dog made white all over? No, I can't make it a picture of Scruggs. Why not? Well, Scruggs isn't the right sort of dog to take out shooting. Well, he's not, that's why. This has got to be a retriever. All right, well, I'll put in a liver-and-white spaniel. Oh, well, it's rather a pretty dog with long ears. Yes, I daresay it is like Colonel Amery's. No, I don't know Colonel Amery. Did you put the cap on that white paint? Dash it! if you go losing things like that I'll send you back to Mother and she'll spank you. What? Well, the gentleman has a green coat because he's a gamekeeper. Possibly Colonel Amery's gamekeeper doesn't, but this one does. No, I don't know why gamekeepers wear green coats--to keep them warm, I expect. No, I haven't got any brown paint same as that tree-trunk. I get that by mixing other colours. No, I've got all the colours I want now. You can put 'em away and shut the box. Yes, I can tell pretty well how much I want before I start. That's called a palette knife. No, it isn't meant to be sharp. It's meant for cleaning your palette and so on. Some people use a knife to paint with. Yes, it's nice and wiggly, but it won't stand too much of that kind of treatment, my lad. Yes, of course you can paint with a knife if you want to. You can paint with your fingers if it comes to that. No, I shouldn't advise you to try. Yes, well, it makes a rougher kind of surface, all blobs and chunks of paint. All right, I'll show you presently. Yes, I'm going to begin with the sky. Why? Well, why do you think? Yes, because it's at the top. Yes, of course that blue's too dark, but I'm going to put some white in it. Yes, and some green. You didn't know there was any green in the sky? Well, there is. And sometimes there's purple and pink too. No, I'm not going to paint a purple and pink sky. The gentleman and the dogs have only just started out. It's morning in this picture. Yes, I know, on the other side they're coming home with a lot of birds and things. I'll put a pink and purple sunset into that if you're good and don't ask too many questions. No, be a good girl and don't joggle my arm. Oh, Lord!

I realize the rest of the team, including the other rookies, are all in matching team T-shirts. I'm the only one wearing an Owl River High School Girls' hockey hoodie complete with pink cursive lettering, which probably isn't winning me any points right now. In fact, a lot of the guys are also sporting stiff new ball caps with Owl River Hockey on the front. I'm kind of disappointed that I got left out of the new swag.