Floor Board Quotes

If you are going to do that, would you mind not jostling the bed so much?' came a sarcastic voice near the head board. 'Perhaps you could roll around on the floor.

As long as you have any floor space at all, you have room for books! Just make two stacks of books the same height, place them three or four feet apart, lay a board across them, and repeat. Voila! Bookshelves!

Well, son, I'll tell you: Life for me ain't been no crystal stair. It's had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor -- Bare. But all the time I'se been a-climbin' on, And reachin' landin's, And turnin' corners, And sometimes goin' in the dark Where there ain't been no light. So boy, don't you turn back. Don't you set down on the steps 'Cause you finds it's kinder hard. Don't you fall now -- For I'se still goin', honey, I'se still climbin', And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

Mother to Son Well, son, I'll tell you: Life for me ain't been no crystal stair. It's had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor - Bare. But all the time I'se been a'climbin' on, And reachin' landin's, And turnin' corners, And sometimes goin' in the dark Where there ain't been no light. So boy, don't you turn back. Don't you set down on the steps 'Cause you finds it's kinder hard. Don't you fall now - For I'se still goin', honey, I'se still climbin', And life for me ain't been no crystal stair. - Langston Hughes (112)

The lie had worked so far, but Lacey felt its softness, like a floor of rotten boards beneath her feet.

...you merely look at me and I want to confess, but don't - I've buried my heart under the floor boards, but you always dig it up...

Inside a barn is a whole universe, with its own time zone and climate and ecosystem, a shadowy world of swirling dust illuminated in tiger stripes by light shining through the cracks between the boards. Old leather tack, lengths of chain, rope, and baling twine dangled from nails and rafters and draped over stall railings. Generations of pocketknives lay lost in the layers of detritus on the floor.

I lay so still in the gloom I could hear the house breathe, and the boards of the floors whispered, conniving a way to keep me here forever.

This is an old house. Among the oldest in the area, a white clapboard former farmhouse built in 1748. Fart on the porch and it rattles a floor board in the attic. -Dice (Swoon)

I took a breath. Back in that house, on a good day. Stripes of sunshine on the carpet, a board game set out on the floor, a pair of dice, two brightly colored counters. A day with more ladders than snakes.

And they are dancing, the board floor slamming under the jackboots and the fiddlers grinning hideously over their canted pieces. Towering over them all is the judge and he is naked dancing, his small feet lively and quick and now in doubletime and bowing to the ladies, huge and pale and hairless, like an enormous infant. He never sleeps, he says. He says he’ll never die. He bows to the fiddlers and sashays backwards and throws back his head and laughs deep in his throat and he is a great favorite, the judge. He wafts his hat and the lunar dome of his skull passes palely under the lamps and he swings about and takes possession of one of the fiddles and he pirouettes and makes a pass, two passes, dancing and fiddling at once. His feet are light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.

So I am mad, you say? You should have seen how careful I was to put the body where no one could find it. First I cut off the head, then the arms and the legs. I was careful not to let a single drop of blood fall on the floor. I pulled up three of the boards that formed the floor, and put the pieces of the body there. Then I put the boards down again, care fully, so carefully that no human eye could see that they had been moved.

Then you start to see things, Lloydy-my-boy. Things you missed from the gutter. Like how the floor of the Wagon is nothing but straight pine boards, so fresh they’re still bleeding sap, and if you took your shoes off you’d be sure to get a splinter.

But what he said was true enough: I had recently destroyed a perfectly good set of wire braces by straightening them to pick a lock. Father had grumbled, of course, but had made another appointment to have me netted and dragged back up to London, to that third-floor ironmonger's shop in Farringdon Street, where I would be strapped to a board like Boris Karloff as various bits of ironmongery were shoved into my mouth, screwed in, and bolted to my gums.

The game had to be played the same way every day or the pieces would fall to the floor, the board would collapse, and the illusion that you were shaping your own life, that you were in control, would break.

Perhaps tomorrow I shall pick up one of the houses, any one, and, holding it gently in one hand, pull it carefully apart with my other hand, with great delicacy taking the pieces of it off one after another: first the door and then, dislodging the slight nails with care, the right front corner of the house, board by board, and then, sweeping out the furniture inside, down the right wall of the house, removing it with care and not touching the second floor, which should remain intact even after the first floor is entirely gone. Then the stairs, step by step, and all this while the mannikins inside run screaming from each section of the house to a higher and a more concealed room, crushing one another and stumbling and pulling frantically, slamming doors behind them while my strong fingers pull each door softly off its hinges and pull the walls apart and lift out the windows intact and take out carefully the tiny beds and chairs; and finally they will be all together like seeds in a pomegranate, in one tiny room, hardly breathing, some of them fainting, some crying, and all wedged in together looking in the direction from which I am coming, and then, when I take the door off with sure careful fingers, there they all will be, packed inside and crushed back against the wall, and I shall eat the room in one mouthful, chewing ruthlessly on the boards and the small sweet bones.

He walked through the white corridors, past the notice-boards with their offers of small rooms and old cars, past the coffee bar where people sat at tables, past a hole in the white floor where an old chair stood sentry over an opened conduit in which a torch shone and a man crawled, and as he left he looked at his watch:

Each day when the train stopped, we'd lean out of the car and try to count the number of bodies thrown. It grew every day. I noticed Jonas kept track of the children, making marks with a stone on the floor board of the car. I looked at his marks and imagined drawing little heads atop each one — hair, eyes, a nose, and a mouth.

Over a quarter of a century ago she and Vernon had made a household for almost a year, in a tiny rooftop flat on the rue de Seine. There were always damp towels on the floor then, and cataracts of her underwear tumbling from drawers she never closed, a big ironing board that was never folded away, and in the one overfilled wardrobe dresses , crushed and shouldering sideways like commuters on the metro. Magazines, makeup, bank statements, bead necklaces, flowers, knickers, ashtrays, invitations, tampons, LPs, airplane tickets, high heeled shoes- not a single surface was left uncovered by something of Molly's, so that when Vernon was meant to be working at home, he took to writing in a cafe along the street. And yet each morning she arose fresh from the shell of this girly squalor, like a Botticelli Venus, to present herself, not naked, of course, but sleekly groomed, at the offices of Paris Vogue.

Understanding sank in as I realized I was hanging off someone. Particularly off someone’s shoulder—Aaron’s shoulder to be one hundred percent exact. What in the— Everybody seemed to be on board, if the clapping and cheering around us were any indication. Ignoring the little commotion behind us, Aaron rearranged me on his broad shoulder, gripping my waist gently but firmly. A complaint rose and died in my throat as he shot off, running. “Aaron,” I screeched with urgency. He was running with me hanging off him like a goddamn human-sized potato sack. With every stride, the symmetric and strained strings of muscle on his back moved. His backside too. Distracting me. Dammit, Lina, no. Focus. “Aaron,” I repeated, being ignored again. “What. Are. You. Doing?” My speech was interrupted with each bounce of his body. With each stomp of his long legs, guiding the ball in my sister’s direction. “Aaron Blackford!” He chuckled. Then, he patted the back of my thigh. “I couldn’t let my girlfriend fall to the floor now, could I?” the bastard said calmly, not sounding one bit out of breath.

We can talk to one another on telephones in banks, in cars, in line. No more sitting on the floor attached to a cord while everybody listens. No more standing outside the booth in the cold, fingering an adulterous dime. We send each other mail without stamps. Watch television without antennas. Wear seatbelts, smoke less, and never on a bus, never in the lobby while we’re waiting for the lawyer to call on us. Nowhere now, a typewriter ribbon. Quaintly the record album’s scratch and spin. Our groceries, scanned. Pump our own gas. Take off our shoes before boarding our plane. Those towers: Gone. And Pluto’s no longer a planet: Forget it. I could go on and on, but you’re still dead and nothing’s any different.

On the wall next to the door we’d entered through was a huge floor-to-ceiling bulletin/whiteboard combo and hanging from a thumbtack on the bulletin board amongst pictures and other various sorts of memorabilia was my bra. It’d been washed but it still had a good many blotches of pink on it. If that wasn’t shocking enough, the dialogue written over the last two weeks on the whiteboard pertaining to said bra certainly was. I’ll include the copy just so you can truly appreciate what I’m dealing with here. Tristan’s Mom: What’s this? Tristan: A size 34B lace covered slingshot. Jeff: Nice! Tristan’s Mom: Do I want to know? Tristan: I don’t know, do you? Tristan’s Mom: Not really. Are you planning on returning it or did you win some kind of prize? Tristan: I plead the fifth. Tristan’s Dad: Well done son. Jeff: Ditto! Tristan’s Mom: Don’t encourage him. Tristan: Gee, thanks Mom. Tristan’s Dad: Can’t a father be proud of his only child? Tristan’s Mom: He doesn’t need your help…obviously. Tristan’s Dad: That’s because he takes after me. Tristan: Was there anything else I can do for you two? Tristan’s Mom: Tell her I tried to get the stains out, but I’m afraid they set in before I got to it. Tristan: I’m sure she’ll appreciate your effort, but if I’m any judge (and I’d like to think I am) its size has caused it to become obsolete and she needs to trade up. Jeff: I’m so proud. Tristan: Thanks man. Tristan’s Mom: A name would be nice you know. Tristan: Camie. Tristan’s Mom: Do we get to meet her? Tristan: Sure. I’ll have my people call your people and set it up. Tristan’s Mom: I don’t know why I bother. Do you want anything from the store? Tristan: Yeah, Camie’s sleeping over tonight and I promised her bacon and eggs for breakfast. Jeff’s got the eggs covered but could you pick up some bacon for us and maybe a box of Twinkies for the bus? Thanks, you’re the best. Jeff: I have the eggs covered? Tristan’s Dad: He gets his sense of humor from you. Tristan’s Mom: Flattery will get you everywhere. How would you like your eggs prepared dear?

I see it on his face. I hear it when he talks. We look out at the world and we see the same thing: Not Fair. And the only difference between us is Ricky's out there trying to get even. And he knows not trust anybody and he got it straight from me. And he knows not to try and get work, and guess where he got that. He walks around like there's loose boards in the floor, and you know who laid that floor, I did.

[The intellect of fallen man] may be compared to a buzz-saw that is sharp and shining, ready to cut the boards that come to it. Let us say that a carpenter wishes to cut fifty boards for the purpose of laying the floor of a house. He has marked his boards. He has set his saw. He begins at one end of the mark on the board. But he does not know that his seven-year-old son has tampered with the saw and changed its set. The result is that every board he saws is cut slantwise and thus unusable because too short except at the point where the saw made its first contact with the wood. As long as the set of the saw is not changed, the result will always be the same. So also whenever the teachings of Christianity are presented to the natural man, they will be cut according to the set of sinful human personality.

The floor was covered in sawdust to soak up spilled lager, vomit, and whatever else the bar’s patrons lost control of. Retvenko wondered how long it had been since the boards had been swept clean. He buried his nose more deeply in the glass, inhaling

The Midgard Serpent opened its mouth and swallowed the ox head. The hook dug into the gums of its mouth, and when the serpent felt this, he snapped back so hard that both of Thor’s fists slammed against the gunwale. Thor now became angry and, taking on his divine strength, he strained so hard that both his feet pushed through the bottom of the boat. Using the sea floor to brace himself, he began pulling the serpent up on board. It can be said that no one has seen a more terrifying sight than this: Thor, narrowing his eyes at the serpent, while the serpent spits out poison and stares straight back from below. It is told that the giant Hymir changed colour. He grew pale and feared for his life when he saw the serpent and also the sea rushing in and out of the boat.

Melody and Isadore play backgammon—on a board I painted on the lobby floor. They double and redouble each other, and laugh. •

The rain streamed through the window and splashed on the boards, so that little beads of dust ran to and fro on the floor like globules of mercury.

I've been scraping little shavings off my ration of light And I've formed it into a ball, and each time I pack a bit more onto it I make a bowl of my hands and I scoop it from its secret cache Under a loose board in the floor And I blow across it and I send it to you Against those moments when The darkness blows under your door Isn't that what friends are for?

Closing the door behind him, Macdonald stood still in the darkness, as he had stood so often in other buildings. Houses, barns, shops, flats, warehouses, all dark, as this passage was dark, but having in the darkness their own character because each had its own peculiar smell. Gramarye smelt of floor polish and carbolic and soap: something of the unwelcoming smell of an institution, but behind the overlay of modern cleanliness, the smell of the ancient house declared itself, of old mortar, of stone walls built without damp courses, of woodwork decaying under coats of paint, of panelling and floor boards which gave out their ancient breath as the coldness of the stone house triumphed over the warmth of the midsummer evening.

He picks the most visible place on purpose,” said the investor and Tesla board member Steve Jurvetson. “He’s at Tesla just about every Saturday and Sunday and wants people to see him and know they can find him. Then, he can also call suppliers on the weekend, and let them know that he’s personally putting in the hours on the factory floor and expects the same from them.

They say it has several hundred floors. How do you get to the top? With a ladder called an elevator. To get to the top floor, you board the elevator early in the morning and you reach your floor by sunset.

A man opposite me shifted his feet, accidentally brushing his foot against mine. It was a gentle touch, barely noticeable, but the man immediately reached out to touch my knee and then his own chest with the fingertips of his right hand, in the Indian gesture of apology for an unintended offence. In the carriage and the corridor beyond, the other passengers were similarly respectful, sharing, and solicitous with one another. At first, on that first journey out of the city into India, I found such sudden politeness infuriating after the violent scramble to board the train. It seemed hypocritical for them to show such deferential concern over a nudge with a foot when, minutes before, they'd all but pushed one another out of the windows. Now, long years and many journeys after that first ride on a crowded rural train, I know that the scrambled fighting and courteous deference were both expressions of the one philosophy: the doctrine of necessity. The amount of force and violence necessary to board the train, for example, was no less and no more than the amount of politeness and consideration necessary to ensure that the cramped journey was as pleasant as possible afterwards. What is necessary! That was the unspoken but implied and unavoidable question everywhere in India. When I understood that, a great many of the characteristically perplexing aspects of public life became comprehensible: from the acceptance of sprawling slums by city authorities, to the freedom that cows had to roam at random in the midst of traffic; from the toleration of beggars on the streets, to the concatenate complexity of the bureaucracies; and from the gorgeous, unashamed escapism of Bollywood movies, to the accommodation of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Tibet, Iran, Afghanistan, Africa, and Bangladesh, in a country that was already too crowded with sorrows and needs of its own. The real hypocrisy, I came to realise, was in the eyes and minds and criticisms of those who came from lands of plenty, where none had to fight for a seat on a train. Even on that first train ride, I knew in my heart that Didier had been right when he'd compared India and its billion souls to France. I had an intuition, echoing his thought, that if there were a billion Frenchmen or Australians or Americans living in such a small space, the fighting to board the train would be much more, and the courtesy afterwards much less. And in truth, the politeness and consideration shown by the peasant farmers, travelling salesmen, itinerant workers, and returning sons and fathers and husbands did make for an agreeable journey, despite the cramped conditions and relentlessly increasing heat. Every available centimetre of seating space was occupied, even to the sturdy metal luggage racks over our heads. The men in the corridor took turns to sit or squat on a section of floor that had been set aside and cleaned for the purpose. Every man felt the press of at least two other bodies against his own. Yet there wasn't a single display of grouchiness or bad temper

Sometimes the one who dreams about Fairies mingles with the soul of the house. The thought of the hedges outside the door has stopped the ticking of the clock, and from the cellar the song of hidden woods can be heard. From deep down in the well he awakens the fibers of the beams, casts a spell on the floor boards and penetrates deep into the tapestry. He sits down in the child’s room where the garden of things tells a story about the theater of shadows. His thoughts are infused in a kettle and illustrated in a spiral of steam. The armchair flies out of the window and the curtains begin to flower. He can be heard climbing the stairs, leaving behind handfuls of visiting cards, and on each one of them is the address of a star. In the attic, his step is reduced to the dance of mice. A wreath of sparks brightens up the fireplace. The dormer window looks out onto the hopscotch of the skies… The dreamer’s soul is now so brilliant and light that it is like a spangle in a parade of Fairies

Discovering a note in the mending basket, Phoebe plucked it out and unfolded it. She instantly recognized West's handwriting. Unemployed Feline Seeking Household Position To Whom It May Concern, I hereby offer my services as an experienced mouser and personal companion. References from a reputable family to be provided upon request. Willing to accept room and board in lieu of pay. Indoor lodgings preferred. Your servant, Galoshes the Cat Glancing up from the note, Phoebe found her parents' questioning gazes on her. "Job application," she explained sourly. "From the cat." "How charming," Seraphina exclaimed, reading over her shoulder. "'Personal companion,' my foot," Phoebe muttered. "This is a semi-feral animal who has lived in outbuildings and fed on vermin." "I wonder," Seraphina said thoughtfully. "If she were truly feral, she wouldn't want any contact with humans. With time and patience, she might become domesticated." Phoebe rolled her eyes. "It seems we'll find out." The boys returned from the dining car with a bowl of water and a tray of refreshments. Galoshes descended to the floor long enough to devour a boiled egg, an anchovy canapé, and a spoonful of black caviar from a silver dish on ice. Licking her lips and purring, the cat jumped back into Phoebe's lap and curled up with a sigh. "I'd say she's adjusting quite well," Seraphina commented with a grin, and elbowed Phoebe gently. "One never knows who might rise above their disreputable past.

Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes" First, her tippet made of tulle, easily lifted off her shoulders and laid on the back of a wooden chair. And her bonnet, the bow undone with a light forward pull. Then the long white dress, a more complicated matter with mother-of-pearl buttons down the back, so tiny and numerous that it takes forever before my hands can part the fabric, like a swimmer’s dividing water, and slip inside. You will want to know that she was standing by an open window in an upstairs bedroom, motionless, a little wide-eyed, looking out at the orchard below, the white dress puddled at her feet on the wide-board, hardwood floor. The complexity of women’s undergarments in nineteenth-century America is not to be waved off, and I proceeded like a polar explorer through clips, clasps, and moorings, catches, straps, and whalebone stays, sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness. Later, I wrote in a notebook it was like riding a swan into the night, but, of course, I cannot tell you everything— the way she closed her eyes to the orchard, how her hair tumbled free of its pins, how there were sudden dashes whenever we spoke. What I can tell you is it was terribly quiet in Amherst that Sabbath afternoon, nothing but a carriage passing the house, a fly buzzing in a windowpane. So I could plainly hear her inhale when I undid the very top hook-and-eye fastener of her corset and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed, the way some readers sigh when they realize that Hope has feathers, that Reason is a plank, that Life is a loaded gun that looks right at you with a yellow eye.

Get married and have halfbreed babies, manuscripts, home¬spun blankets and mother’s milk on your happy ragged mat floor like this one. Get yourself a hut house not too far from town, live cheap, go ball in the bars once in a while, write and rumble in the hills and learn how to saw boards and talk to grandmas you damn fool, carry loads of wood for them, clap your hands at shrines, get supernatural favors, take flower-arrangement lessons and grow chrysanthemums by the door, and get married for krissakes, get a friendly smart sensitive human-being gal who don’t give a shit for martinis every night and all that dumb white machinery in the kitchen.

The owner as he crosses the board floor, moving between shelves, past stacked crates and burlap sacks bulging with sugar and flour. “Jessup? It’s Brady! You in back?” The twelve burros crane their scrawny necks in his direction when Brady emerges from the merc. He reaches into his greatcoat, pulls out a tin of Star Navy tobacco, and shoves a chaw between lips and gums gone blackish purple in the last year. “What the hell?” he whispers. When he delivered supplies two weeks ago, this little mining town was bustling. Now Abandon looms listless before him in the gloom of late afternoon, streets empty, snow banked high against the unshoveled plank sidewalks, no tracks as far as he can see. The cabins scattered across the lower slopes lie buried to their chimneys, and with not a one of them smoking, the air smells too clean. Brady is a man at home in solitude, often spending days on the trail, alone in wild, quiet places, but this silence is all wrong—a lie. He feels menaced by it, and with each passing moment, more certain that something.

Pirate and Osbie Feel are leaning on their roof-ledge, a magnificent sunset across and up the winding river, the imperial serpant, crowds of factories, flats, parks, smoky spires and gables, incandescent sky casting downward across the miles of deep streets and roofs cluttering and sinuous river Thames a drastic strain of burnt orange, to remind a visitor of his mortal transience here, to seal or empty all the doors and windows in sight to his eyes that look only for a bit of company, a word or two in the street before he goes up to the soap-heavy smell of the rented room and the squares of coral sunset on the floor-boards—an antique light, self-absorbed, fuel consumed in the metered winter holocaust, the more distant shapes among the threads or sheets of smoke now perfect ash ruins of themselves, nearer windows, struck a moment by the sun, not reflecting at all but containing the same destroying light, this intense fading in which there is no promise of return, light that rusts the government cars at the curbsides, varnishes the last faces hurrying past the shops in the cold as if a vast siren had finally sounded, light that makes chilled untraveled canals of many streets, and that fills with the starlings of London, converging by millions to hazy stone pedestals, to emptying squares and a great collective sleep. They flow in rings, concentric rings on the radar screens. The operators call them ‘angels.

Daniel was just about to swing inside the home team's locker room when the door opened beneath his hand. He flattened himself up against the boards in time to see Detective Bartholemew leading Jason Underhill out. The kid was still wearing his hockey gear, in his stocking feet, carrying his skates in one hand. His face was flushed and his eyes were trained on the rubber mats on the floor.

We became the most successful advanced projects company in the world by hiring talented people, paying them top dollar, and motivating them into believing that they could produce a Mach 3 airplane like the Blackbird a generation or two ahead of anybody else. Our design engineers had the keen experience to conceive the whole airplane in their mind’s-eye, doing the trade-offs in their heads between aerodynamic needs and weapons requirements. We created a practical and open work environment for engineers and shop workers, forcing the guys behind the drawing boards onto the shop floor to see how their ideas were being translated into actual parts and to make any necessary changes on the spot. We made every shop worker who designed or handled a part responsible for quality control. Any worker—not just a supervisor or a manager—could send back a part that didn’t meet his or her standards. That way we reduced rework and scrap waste. We encouraged our people to work imaginatively, to improvise and try unconventional approaches to problem solving, and then got out of their way. By applying the most commonsense methods to develop new technologies, we saved tremendous amounts of time and money, while operating in an atmosphere of trust and cooperation both with our government customers and between our white-collar and blue-collar employees. In the end, Lockheed’s Skunk Works demonstrated the awesome capabilities of American inventiveness when free to operate under near ideal working conditions. That may be our most enduring legacy as well as our source of lasting pride.

I couldn't imagine what it would mean for an angle to be impossible to trisect. If a thing existed, couldn't you cut it in three? The professor started sketching diagrams and equations on the board. I copied everything in my notebook. Ivan was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall. There was a ragged spot in his jeans just below the knee. It made a much stronger impression on me than the proof about angles.

On the TV and in the newspapers all we hear and read is 'live your life or the terrorists win' and it sounds great, I’m all for that, except my kids won’t ask for a bathroom pass because the faculty facilities are on the first floor of the building and the MPs patrolling the second floor won’t go downstairs on their shift—so I’ve got middle school kids afraid to take a piss because there might be a soldier in the stall next to them carrying a loaded M- 16—but hell yes, I’m all for 'live your life' and screw the terrorists, and screw all the countries who harbor and support them. I’m on board with that, except I’ve got these kids who stay home now, because they’re scared riding a bus with soldiers carrying guns, knowing that one soldier isn’t enough, so there’s a military truck full of soldiers with even bigger guns following the bus 'just in case.

Make a list of some things your children like you to do with them but aren’t necessarily fun for you—playing a board game on the floor with a young child, going outside to throw a ball, sitting down with a child to read his or her creative story or to look at an artistic creation, and so on. Commit to saying yes to their requests instead of no, knowing that if you invest in what is important to them, they will be open to believing in what is important to you.

In this makeshift place Willie Dunne discovered a peace of sorts. Yes the wild guns struck their great notes in the distance like the bells of a horrific city. Hearts asleep in the shires of England close upon the sea must heard them too. But he fell down between the boards of memory and sleep like a penny in an old floor. But he fell down between the boards of memory and sleep like a penny in an old floor. He lay there in the dust of nowhere, sunken and alone.

In two days they began to come upon bones and cast-off apparel. They saw halfburied skeletons of mules with the bones so white and polished they seemed incandescent even in that blazing heat and they saw panniers and packsaddles and the bones of men and they saw a mule entire, the dried and blackened carcass hard as iron. They rode on. The white noon saw them through the waste like a ghost army, so pale they were with dust, like shades of figures erased upon a board. The wolves loped paler yet and grouped and skittered and lifted their lean snouts on the air. At night the horses were fed by hand from sacks of meal and watered from buckets. There was no more sickness. The survivors lay quietly in that cratered void and watched the whitehot stars go rifling down the dark. Or slept with their alien hearts beating in the sand like pilgrims exhausted upon the face of the planet Anareta, clutched to a namelessness wheeling in the night. They moved on and the iron of the wagontires grew polished bright as chrome in the pumice. To the south the blue cordilleras stood footed in their paler image on the sand like reflections in a lake and there were no wolves now. They took to riding by night, silent jornadas save for the trundling of the wagons and the wheeze of the animals. Under the moonlight a strange party of elders with the white dust thick on their moustaches and their eyebrows. They moved on and the stars jostled and arced across the firmament and died beyond the inkblack mountains. They came to know the nightskies well. Western eyes that read more geometric constructions than those names given by the ancients. Tethered to the polestar they rode the Dipper round while Orion rose in the southwest like a great electric kite. The sand lay blue in the moonlight and the iron tires of the wagons rolled among the shapes of the riders in gleaming hoops that veered and wheeled woundedly and vaguely navigational like slender astrolabes and the polished shoes of the horses kept hasping up like a myriad of eyes winking across the desert floor. They watched storms out there so distant they could not be heard, the silent lightning flaring sheetwise and the thin black spine of the mountain chain fluttering and sucked away again in the dark. They saw wild horses racing on the plain, pounding their shadows down the night and leaving in the moonlight a vaporous dust like the palest stain of their passing.

Why do we bury our dead?” His nose was dented in at the bridge like a sphinx; the cause of which I could only imagine had been a freak archaeological accident. I thought about my parents. They had requested in their will that they be buried side by side in a tiny cemetery a few miles from our house. “Because it’s respectful?” He shook his head. “That’s true, but that’s not the reason we do it.” But that was the reason we buried people, wasn’t it? After gazing at him in confusion, I raised my hand, determined to get the right answer. “Because leaving people out in the open is unsanitary.” Mr. B. shook his head and scratched the stubble on his neck. I glared at him, annoyed at his ignorance and certain that my responses were correct. “Because it’s the best way to dispose of a body?” Mr. B. laughed. “Oh, but that’s not true. Think of all the creative ways mass murderers have dealt with body disposal. Surely eating someone would be more practical than the coffin, the ceremony, the tombstone.” Eleanor grimaced at the morbid image, and the mention of mass murderers seemed to wake the rest of the class up. Still, no one had an answer. I’d heard Mr. B. was a quack, but this was just insulting. How dare he presume that I didn’t know what burials meant? I’d watched them bury my parents, hadn’t I? “Because that’s just what we do,” I blurted out. “We bury people when they die. Why does there have to be a reason for everything?” “Exactly!” Mr. B. grabbed the pencil from behind his ear and began gesticulating with it. “We’ve forgotten why we bury people. “Imagine you’re living in ancient times. Your father dies. Would you randomly decide to put him inside a six-sided wooden box, nail it shut, then bury it six feet below the earth? These decisions aren’t arbitrary, people. Why a six-sided box? And why six feet below the earth? And why a box in the first place? And why did every society throughout history create a specific, ritualistic way of disposing of their dead?” No one answered. But just as Mr. B. was about to continue, there was a knock on the door. Everyone turned to see Mrs. Lynch poke her head in. “Professor Bliss, the headmistress would like to see Brett Steyers in her office. As a matter of urgency.” Professor Bliss nodded, and Brett grabbed his bag and stood up, his chair scraping against the floor as he left. After the door closed, Mr. B. drew a terrible picture of a mummy on the board, which looked more like a hairy stick figure. “The Egyptians used to remove the brains of their dead before mummification. Now, why on earth would they do that?” There was a vacant silence. “Think, people! There must be a reason. Why the brain? What were they trying to preserve?” When no one answered, he answered his own question. “The mind!” he said, exasperated. “The soul!” As much as I had planned on paying attention and participating in class, I spent the majority of the period passing notes with Eleanor. For all of his enthusiasm, Professor Bliss was repetitive and obsessed with death and immortality. When he faced the board to draw the hieroglyphic symbol for Ra, I read the note Eleanor had written me. Who is cuter? A. Professor Bliss B. Brett Steyers C. Dante Berlin D. The mummy I laughed. My hand wavered between B and C for the briefest moment. I wasn’t sure if you could really call Dante cute. Devastatingly handsome and mysterious would be the more appropriate description. Instead I circled option D. Next to it I wrote Obviously! and tossed it onto her desk when no one was looking.

It’s baby math,” Catalina growled. “I could do this in my sleep in second grade.” Arabella ran out of blackboard space, crouched, and began dividing on the floor. “This is what we get for teaching them Common Core,” one of the arbiters said. “There is nothing wrong with Common Core,” someone else said. Arabella wrote, “This sucks!” on the floor and kept dividing. Finally, she stood up, wrote 124 on the board, and glared at the Keeper. Catalina slapped her hand over her face. “I say we take it,” Linus said. “Otherwise we might be here all night.

If anyone seriously thinks by going natural, he will be escaping The Establishment, finally getting away from The Man and from the clutches of the good corporations, I have a bit of bad news. The corporations are way ahead of you. There are high-powered boards sitting around half-an-acre mahogany tables on the thirty-third floors of skyscrapers in New York City, and they are meeting right this minute, and they are making decisions on the marketing of the ponderosa pine bark chips, lightly salted. If you slice them thin enough, they approach being edible

A loose board on the boat’s deck creaked under Hadrian’s weight and Royce glared at him. Twelve years they had worked together, and still Royce did not seem capable of understanding that Hadrian could not float. The problem was that Royce apparently could. He made it look so easy. Hadrian walked like the caricature of a thief—on his toes, his arms out for balance, wavering up and down as if he were on a tightrope. Royce walked as casually as if he were sauntering down a city street. They communicated as they always did on the job, with facial expressions and hand gestures. Royce had learned sign language as part of his guild training but had never bothered teaching Hadrian more than a few signals. Royce was always able to communicate what he needed by pointing, counting with his fingers, or making simple obvious signs like scissoring his fingers across his level palm, imitating legs walking on a floor. He expressed most of his silent dialogue the way he was now: through rolled eyes, glares, and the pitiable shaking of his head. Given how irritated he so often looked, it was a mystery why he put up with Hadrian.

But is formalizing a bond really such a significant shift, such an emotional event? This may strike many as a silly question, given that so many couples today live together before marriage. About 41 percent of U.S. couples now cohabit before they wed, compared with only 16 percent in 1980. So how much of a change can there be after an official ceremony? A lot, researchers have found. Living together may fully acquaint you with someone’s everyday habits and likes and dislikes—he drops his dirty laundry on the floor or in the hamper; she wants the right or left side of the bed—but it often stops short of complete emotional linkage. It’s like bouncing on the diving board but not plunging in. Moreover, cohabitation seems to have a hangover effect. Data show that couples that have lived together are more likely to be dissatisfied with marriage and to divorce. Why this is so is unclear, but it may be that couples who live together have more general reservations about marriage, more ambivalence about long-term commitment, and are less religious. Religiosity seems to encourage partners to wed and, when problems occur, to struggle to stay married.

It was not at right angles to the floor. But as soon as I have said this, I hasten to add that this way of putting it is a later reconstruction. What one actually felt at the moment was that the column of light was vertical but the floor was not horizontal — the whole room seemed to have heeled over as if it were on board ship. The impression, however produced, was that this creature had reference to some horizontal, to some whole system of directions, based outside the Earth, and that its mere presence imposed that alien system on me and abolished the terrestrial horizontal.

I still hadn’t boarded the elevator. It was as if my feet were glued to the floor. There was already a tension in the air between us. It felt electric and dangerous. And for a moment I thought I might choose to take the stairs. He was very tempting; I’d give him that. “Are you getting on?” “Aren’t you getting off?” I asked. Max tilted his head to the side and smirked at me. “If you get on this thing, probably.” “You’re disgusting.” I rolled my eyes at his cock-sure response even though a part of me found his arrogance more than slightly amusing. Boarding the elevator, I decided to stand as far away as I would from Max. “Whatever, I’m going down.” “That’s what she said.

Only a fool says in his heart There is no Creator, no King of kings, Only mules would dare to bray These lethal mutterings. Over darkened minds as these The Darkness bears full sway, Fruitless, yet, bearing fruit, In their fell, destructive way. Sterile, though proliferate, A filthy progeny sees the day, When Evil, Thought and Action mate: Breeding sin, rebels and decay. The blackest deeds and foul ideals, Multiply throughout the earth, Through deadened, lifeless, braying souls, The Darkness labours and gives birth. Taking the Lord’s abundant gifts And rotting them to the core, They dress their dish and serve it out Foul seeds to infect thousands more. ‘The Tree of Life is dead!’ they cry, ‘And that of Knowledge not enough, Let us glut on the ashen apples Of Sodom and Gomorrah.’ Have pity on Thy children, Lord, Left sorrowing on this earth, While fools and all their kindred Cast shadows with their murk, And to the dwindling wise, They toss their heads and wryly smirk. The world daily grinds to dust Virtue’s fair unicorns, Rather, it would now beget Vice’s mutant manticores. Wisdom crushed, our joy is gone, Buried under anxious fears For lost rights and freedoms, We shed many bitter tears. Death is life, Life is no more, Humanity buried in a tomb, In a fatal prenatal world Where tiny flowers Are ripped from the womb, Discarded, thrown away, Inconvenient lives That barely bloomed. Our elders fare no better, Their wisdom unwanted by and by, Boarded out to end their days, And forsaken are left to die. Only the youthful and the useful, In this capital age prosper and fly. Yet, they too are quickly strangled, Before their future plans are met, Professions legally pre-enslaved Held bound by mounting student debt. Our leaders all harangue for peace Yet perpetrate the horror, Of economic greed shored up Through manufactured war. Our armies now welter In foreign civilian gore. How many of our kin are slain For hollow martial honour? As if we could forget, ignore, The scourge of nuclear power, Alas, victors are rarely tried For their woeful crimes of war. Hope and pray we never see A repeat of Hiroshima. No more! Crimes are legion, The deeds of devil-spawn! What has happened to the souls Your Divine Image was minted on? They are now recast: Crooked coins of Caesar and The Whore of Babylon. How often mankind shuts its ears To Your music celestial, Mankind would rather march To the anthems of Hell. If humanity cannot be reclaimed By Your Mercy and great Love Deservedly we should be struck By Vengeance from above. Many dread the Final Day, And the Crack of Doom For others the Apocalypse Will never come too soon. ‘Lift up your heads, be glad’, Fools shall bray no more For at last the Master comes To thresh His threshing floor.

She imagines its walls white. She imagines everything in it painted white. Even the holes in the floor, through the white broken boards, are painted white inside. The house’s windows look out on to high privet hedge. Elisabeth goes outside to paint that high hedge white too. Inside, sitting on a white-painted old couch, the stuffing coming out of it also stiff with white emulsion, Daniel laughs at what she’s doing. He laughs silently but like a child with his feet in his hands as she paints one tiny green leaf white after another. He catches her eye. He winks. That does it. They’re both standing in pure clean white space. Yes, she says. Now we can sell this space for a fortune. Only the very rich can afford to be this minimalist these days.

The floor was of warm, old oak planks, many of the individual planks extraordinarily long, as if sawn from the mast of a tall ship. There were two working tables in the middle of the room, and around the walls were located a binder’s press, with its tall screw; a camera stand; an industrial sewing machine; a gluing cabinet with exhaust hood; a guillotine table and cutting board; a TRS-80 computer and dot matrix printer on a narrow mahogany desk that might have come from a boat; a partner’s table topped in green leather and gilt edging on which resided no fewer than six typewriters, ranging from a 1920s Underwood to a very recent all-plastic Brother machine; a mid-eighteenth-century highly polished flame mahogany map cabinet of twelve drawers;

Gregory was in the walls, in the crawl space between the board floor of the cabin and the bitter ground. He was gone, but he was everywhere. He was on the small pantry shelf where canning was removed. The air of the cabin still held Gregory. He filled and expanded every dark corner, tight, to exploding. He was jammed between her legs so that no matter how she moved, he was inside of Agnes. She couldn't shake him from her vestments or burn him from the stove. He nested in the books, of course. She couldn't stand to touch their pages. He was in the sweet, fragrant wood Mary Kashpaw chopped, split, and piled. In the cloth of curtains, the clasp of doors, he waited. She turned the handle, let the light in, and he came, too, solid and good and alive.

The Hardys led Mr. Worth up a side street. They stopped at a wide, steamy window bearing the lettering: CHARLIE’S CLAM HOUSE “I hear the food’s good,” Joe remarked, and the trio entered the restaurant. It was a typical waterfront eating place, with sawdust on the floor. The place was crowded with diners, despite the late hour. In one corner sat a group of well-dressed people who, like the Hardys, had just left a farewell party on board the liner. But most of the customers were rough-looking men of the waterfront district. The noise of lively conversations and the odor of frying fish filled the air. Frank, Joe, and Bart Worth seated themselves at a plain wooden table in the middle of the room. As soon as the waiter had taken a dinner order for Mr. Worth and sandwiches for the Hardys, the Southerner began his story.

Then there was the time when he picked up a two-by-four on the side of the road and put it in the front seat by me and stuck it out the window. He told me to hold it, which I did, but when the wind hit the board, it turned around and hit me in the head and knocked me out. Another time, when a friend of Daddy’s bought a brand-new Buick, Daddy pressed the push-button window up on my neck. But that time I think it was just a matter of him not being familiar with the equipment. The main thing Momma bases her theory on is once Daddy, who is very artistic, wanted to make a life mask of my face. He put plaster of paris on me but forgot the breathing holes. On top of that he also forgot to put Vaseline on my face. He had to crack the plaster off with a hammer. Momma didn’t speak to him for a week on that one. I myself was sorry that it didn’t turn out. She also says he is going to ruin my nervous system because of the time he sneaked up on me when I was listening to Inner Sanctum on the radio. Just as the squeaking door opened, he grabbed me and yelled, “Got ya,” real loud, which caused me to faint. She also didn’t like him telling me Santa Claus had been killed in a bus accident and making me throw up. The Pettibones have very delicate nervous systems. That’s true. Momma is nervous all the time. She’s worn a hole in the floor on the passenger’s side of Daddy’s car from putting on the brakes. Momma always looks like she is on the verge of a hissy fit, but that’s mainly because when she was eighteen, she stuck her head in a gas oven looking at some biscuits and blew her eyebrows off. So she paints them on like little half-moons. People love to talk to her because she always looks interested, even if she isn’t.

It is a rare zek who has not known from three to five transit prisons and camps; many remember a dozen or so, and the sons of Gulag can count up to fifty of them without the slightest difficulty. However, in memory they get all mixed up together because they are so similar: in the illiteracy of their convoys, in their inept roll calls based on case files; the long waiting under the beating sun or autumn drizzle; the still longer body searches that involve undressing completely; their haircuts with unsanitary clippers; their cold, slippery baths; their foul-smelling toilets; their damp and moldy corridors; their perpetually crowded, nearly always dark, wet cells; the warmth of human flesh flanking you on the floor or on the board bunks; the bumpy ridges of bunk heads knocked together from boards; the wet, almost liquid, bread; the gruel cooked from what seems to be silage. And

I shoot up out of my chair. “It’s Bree. Hide the board!” Everyone hops out of their chairs and starts scrambling around and bumping into each other like a classic cartoon. We hear the door shut behind her, and the whiteboard is still standing in the middle of the kitchen like a lit-up marquee. I hiss at Jamal, “Get rid of it!” His eyes are wide orbs, head whipping around in all directions. “Where? In the utensil drawer? Up my shirt?! There’s nowhere! That thing is huge!” “LADY IN THE HOUSE!” Bree shouts from the entryway. The sound of her tennis shoes getting kicked off echoes around the room, and my heart races up my throat. Her name is pasted all over that whiteboard along with phrases like “first kiss—keep it light” and “entwined hand-holding” and “dirty talk about her hair”. Yeah…I’m not sure about that last one, but we’ll see. Basically, it’s all laid out there—the most incriminating board in the world. If Bree sees this thing, it’s all over for me. “Erase it!” Price whispers frantically. “No, we didn’t write it down anywhere else! We’ll lose all the ideas.” I can hear Bree’s footsteps getting closer. “Nathan? Are you home?” “Uh—yeah! In the kitchen.” Jamal tosses me a look like I’m an idiot for announcing our location, but what am I supposed to do? Stand very still and pretend we’re not all huddled in here having a Baby-Sitter’s Club re-enactment? She would find us, and that would look even worse after keeping quiet. “Just flip it over!” I tell anyone who’s not running in a circle chasing his tail. As Lawrence flips the whiteboard, Price tells us all to act natural. So of course, the second Bree rounds the corner, I hop up on the table, Jamal rests his elbow on the wall and leans his head on his hand, and Lawrence just plops down on the floor and pretends to stretch. Derek can’t decide what to do so he’s caught mid-circle. We all have fake smiles plastered on. Our acting is shit. Bree freezes, blinking at the sight of each of us not acting at all natural. “Whatcha guys doing?” Her hair is a cute messy bun of curls on the top of her head and she’s wearing her favorite joggers with one of my old LA Sharks hoodies, which she stole from my closet a long time ago. It swallows her whole, but since she just came from the studio, I know there is a tight leotard under it. I can barely find her in all that material, and yet she’s still the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen. Just her presence in this room feels like finally getting hooked up to oxygen after days of not being able to breathe deeply. We all respond to Bree’s question at the same time but with different answers. It’s highly suspicious and likely what makes her eyes dart to the whiteboard. Sweat gathers on my spine. “What’s with the whiteboard?” she asks, taking a step toward it. I hop off the table and get in her path. “Huh? Oh, it’s…nothing.” She laughs and tries to look around me. I pretend to stretch so she can’t see. “It doesn’t look like nothing. What? Are you guys drawing boobies on that board or something? You look so guilty.” “Ah—you caught us! Lots of illustrated boobs drawn on that board. You don’t want to see it.” She pauses, a fading smile hovering on her lips, and her eyes look up to meet mine. “For real—what’s going on? Why can’t I see it?” She doesn’t believe my boob explanation. I guess we should take that as a compliment? My eyes catch over Bree’s shoulder as Price puts himself out of her line of sight and begins miming the action of getting his phone out and taking a picture of the whiteboard. This little show is directed at Derek, who is standing somewhere behind me. Bree sees me watching Price and whips her head around to catch him. He freezes—hands extended looking like he’s holding an imaginary camera. He then transforms that into a forearm stretch. “So tight after our workout today.” Her eyes narrow.

I select the right practice gun, the one about the size of a pistol, but bulkier, and offer it to Caleb. Tris’s fingers slide between mine. Everything comes easily this morning, every smile and every laugh, every word and every motion. If we succeed in what we attempt tonight, tomorrow Chicago will be safe, the Bureau will be forever changed, and Tris and I will be able to build a new life for ourselves somewhere. Maybe it will even be a place where I trade my guns and knives for more productive tools, screwdrivers and nails and shovels. This morning I feel like I could be so fortunate. I could. “It doesn’t shoot real bullets,” I say, “but it seems like they designed it so it would be as close as possible to one of the guns you’ll be using. It feels real, anyway.” Caleb holds the gun with just his fingertips, like he’s afraid it will shatter in his hands. I laugh. “First lesson: Don’t be afraid of it. Grab it. You’ve held one before, remember? You got us out of the Amity compound with that shot.” “That was just lucky,” Caleb says, turning the gun over and over to see it from every angle. His tongue pushes into his cheek like he’s solving a problem. “Not the result of skill.” “Lucky is better than unlucky,” I say. “We can work on skill now.” I glance at Tris. She grins at me, then leans in to whisper something to Christina. “Are you here to help or what, Stiff?” I say. I hear myself speaking in the voice I cultivated as an initiation instructor, but this time I use it in jest. “You could use some practice with that right arm, if I recall correctly. You too, Christina.” Tris makes a face at me, then she and Christina cross the room to get their own weapons. “Okay, now face the target and turn the safety off,” I say. There is a target across the room, more sophisticated, than the wooden-board target in the Dauntless training rooms. It has three rings in three different colors, green, yellow, and red, so it’s easier to tell where the bullets it. “Let me see how you would naturally shoot.” He lifts up the gun with one hand, squares off his feet and shoulders to the target like he’s about to lift something heavy, and fires. The gun jerks back and up, firing the bullet near the ceiling. I cover my mouth with my hand to disguise my smile. “There’s no need to giggle,” Caleb says irritably. “Book learning doesn’t teach you everything, does it?” Christina says. “You have to hold it with both hands. It doesn’t look as cool, but neither does attacking the ceiling.” “I wasn’t trying to look cool!” Christina stands, her legs slightly uneven, and lifts both arms. She stares the target for a moment, then fires. The training bullet hits the outer circle of the target and bounces off, rolling on the floor. It leaves a circle of light on the target, marking the impact site. I wish I’d had this technology during initiation training. “Oh, good,” I say. “You hit the air around your target’s body. How useful.” “I’m a little rusty,” Christina admits, grinning.

I think Hannah had two brothers. Yes, I’m sure she did. Theo and, and--this boy.” I shook my head. “If he’s Hannah’s brother, why isn’t he in any of the other pictures?” Aunt Blythe didn’t answer right away. In the silence, rain pattered against the windows and dripped through holes in the roof. The wind crept in through cracks and stirred the folds of a long white dress hanging from the rafters. Finally, my aunt raised her eyes from the photograph. “I think his name was Andrew. Isn’t that strange? You share a face and a name with a boy who died years before you were born.” My throat tightened. “He died? Andrew died?” Aunt Blythe looked at me. “Oh, dear,” she said, “I didn’t mean to frighten you.” “I’m not scared!” My voice came out as high and squeaky as a girl’s. Furious at myself for being such a baby, I leapt to my feet and headed for the stairs. “Slow down, Drew,” my aunt called. “You’ll go through the floor!” Before the words were out of her mouth, a board split under my weight, and I fell flat on my face. In seconds my aunt was beside me. “Are you all right?” she asked. “Did you hurt yourself?” “I’m fine.” Too embarrassed to meet her eyes, I peered into the hole I’d made.

5236 rue St. Urbain The baby girl was a quick learner, having synthesized a full range of traits of both of her parents, the charming and the devious. Of all the toddlers in the neighbourhood, she was the first to learn to read and also the first to tear out the pages. Within months she mastered the grilling of the steaks and soon thereafter presented reasons to not grill the steaks. She was the first to promote a new visceral style of physical comedy as a means of reinvigorate the social potential of satire, and the first to declare the movement over. She appreciated the qualities of movement and speed, but also understood the necessity of slowness and leisure. She quickly learned the importance of ladders. She invented games with numerous chess-boards, matches and glasses of unfinished wine. Her parents, being both responsible and duplicitous people, came up with a plan to protect themselves, their apartment and belongings, while also providing an environment to encourage the open development of their daughter's obvious talents. They scheduled time off work, put on their pajamas and let the routines of the apartment go. They put their most cherished books right at her eye-level and gave her a chrome lighter. They blended the contents of the fridge and poured it into bowls they left on the floor. They took to napping in the living room, waking only to wipe their noses on the picture books and look blankly at the costumed characters on the TV shows. They made a fuss for their daughter's attention and cried when she wandered off; they bit or punched each other when she out of the room, and accused the other when she came in, looking frustrated. They made a mess of their pants when she drank too much, and let her figure out the fire extinguisher when their cigarettes set the blankets smoldering. They made her laugh with cute songs and then put clothes pins on the cat's tail. Eventually things found their rhythm. More than once the three of them found their faces waxened with tears, unable to decide if they had been crying, laughing, or if it had all been a reflex, like drooling. They took turns in the bath. Parents and children--it is odd when you trigger instinctive behaviour in either of them--like survival, like nurture. It's alright to test their capabilities, but they can hurt themselves if they go too far. It can be helpful to imagine them all gorging on their favourite food until their bellies ache. Fall came and the family went to school together.

She picked up a piece that looked like the arm of the chair, gasping as she turned it over. “Scorch marks,” she whispered. The wood slipped from her hand as the nightmares took over. You’re safe, Fitz transmitted, filling her mind with a soft thread of warmth. Their thumb rings snapped together as he pulled her gently away from the pile of wood. “I told you this would be a bad idea,” Mr. Forkle said, kicking a broken board into the wall. “I’m fine,” Sophie promised. “I just . . . need to get out of this room.” Fitz helped her wobble back to the hall and she sank to the floor, putting her head between her knees to stop the spinning. Want me to carry you out? Fitz offered. NO! The thought was so loud he jumped. Sorry. I . . . I don’t want to be carried out of here again, like some helpless little girl. No one would ever call you helpless. But I get what you mean. Is there anything I can do? You’re here. He tightened his hold on her hands. “Are we ready to go?” Mr. Forkle asked. Sophie closed her eyes, focusing on tying the threads of panic away with her other emotions. The knot in her chest swelled so huge, it felt like it was pressing on her heart. But after a few slow breaths, she could bear it. “There’s still more to the hideout, isn’t there?” she asked. “Only the old entrance,” Mr. Forkle said. “But it’s nothing worth seeing. Just an empty room with a collapsed tunnel.

...the house let out a groan. Like the wood itself was being warped, the house began to moan and shudder- the coloured glass lights in my room tinkling. I jolted upright, twisting to the open window. Clear skies, nothing- Nothing but the darkness leaking into my room from the hall door. I knew that darkness. A kernel of it lived in me. It rushed in from the cracks of the door like a flood. The house shuddered again. I vaulted from bed, yanked the door open, and darkness swept past me on a phantom wind, full of stars and flapping wings and- pain. So much pain, and despair, and guilt and fear. I hurtled into the hall, utterly blind in the impenetrable dark. But there was a thread between us, and I followed it- to where I knew his room was. I fumbled for the handle, then- More night and stars and wind poured out, my hair whipping around me, and I lifted an arm to shield my face as I edged into the room. 'Rhysand.' No response. But I could feel him there- feel that lifeline between us. I followed it until my shins banged into what had to be his bed. 'Rhysand,' I said over the wind and dark. The house shook, the floor-boards clattering under my feet. I patted the bed, feeling sheets and blankets and down, and then- Then a hard taut, male body. But the bed was enormous, and I couldn't get a grip on him. 'Rhysand!' Around and around darkness swirled, the beginning and end of the world.

I have to ask you something.” Stumbling over words, I described my encounter with Edward. “I have to meet him at the railroad trestle next week. I’m supposed to do something when I get there, but he didn’t say what…” My voice trailed away. The expression on Andrew’s face told me he knew exactly what I was talking about. “Drat,” he muttered. “That low-down skunk. I was hoping he’d forgotten.” Andrew hesitated. Without looking at me, he picked up a piece of chalk and started drawing a little train on the floor. Concentrating on his sketch, he said, “Before I got sick, Edward dared me to jump off the trestle.” My heart beat faster. “Is that what I’m supposed to do? Jump off?” “Now, now, don’t get all het up, Drew. It’s not as bad as you think.” Carefully, Andrew added a curlicue of smoke to his drawing. “You walk out on the trestle and jump in the river. Then you swim to shore. It’s a simple as one two three.” He tapped the chalk three times for emphasis. My mouth was so dry I could hardly speak. Lying down between the rails or dynamiting the train might be better than this. “How high is the trestle?” Instead of answering my question, Andrew said, “It’s a test of manhood. Lots of boys have done it.” I wasn’t interested in testing my manhood or hearing about other boys. I just wanted to know what was going to happen to me. Me--a boy who was scared to jump off a diving board into eight feet of crystal-clear chlorinated water.

If anything, the LAPD had long and famously been guilty of overreaction, as they had shown, for example, during the infamous 1988 raid on two small, adjacent apartment buildings on South Central’s Dalton Avenue. There, eighty LAPD officers had stormed the buildings looking for drugs on a bullshit tip. After handcuffing the terrorized residents—including small children and their grandparents—they then spent the next several hours tearing all the toilets from the floors; smashing in walls, stairwells, bedroom sets, and televisions with sledgehammers; slashing open furniture; and then sending it all crashing through windows into the front yard and arresting anyone who happened by to watch. As they were leaving, the officers spray-painted a large board located down the street with some graffiti. “LAPD Rules,” read one message; “Rolling 30s Die” read another. So completely uninhabitable were the apartments rendered that the Red Cross had to provide the occupants with temporary shelter, as if some kind of natural disaster had occurred. No gang members lived there, no charges were ever filed. In the end, the city paid $3.8 million to the victims of the destruction. A report later written by LAPD assistant chief Robert Vernon called it “a poorly planned and executed field operation [that] involved . . . an improperly focused and supervised aggressive attitude of police officers, supervisors and managers toward being ‘at war’ with gang members.” The

I push my eye farther into the crack, smushing my cheek. The door rattles. Her arm freezes. The needle stops. Instantly, her shadow fills the room, a mountain on the wall. “Leidah?” I hold my breath. No hiding in the wood-box this time. Before I even have time to pull my eye away, the door opens. My mother's face, like the moon in the dark hallway. She squints and takes a step toward me. “Lei-lee?” I want to tell her I’ve had a nightmare about the Sisters, that I can’t sleep with all this whispering and worrying from her—and what are you sewing in the dark, Mamma? I try to move my lips, but I have no mouth. My tongue is gone; my nose is gone. I don’t have a face anymore. It has happened again. I am lying on my back, flatter than bread. My mother’s bare feet slap against my skin, across my belly, my chest. She digs her heel in, at my throat that isn’t there. I can see her head turning toward her bedroom. Snores crawl under the closed door. The door to my room is open, but she can’t see my bed from where she stands, can’t see that my bed is empty. She nods to herself: everything as it should be. Her foot grinds into my chin. The door to the sewing room closes behind her. I struggle to sit up. I wiggle my hips and jiggle my legs. It is no use. I am stuck, pressed flat into the grain of wood under me. But it’s not under me. It is me. I have become the floor. I know it’s true, even as I tell myself I am dreaming, that I am still in bed under the covers. My blood whirls inside the wood knots, spinning and rushing, sucking me down and down. The nicks of boot prints stomp and kick at my bones, like a bruise. I feel the clunk of one board to the next, like bumps of a wheel over stone. And then I am all of it, every knot, grain, and sliver, running down the hall, whooshing like a river, ever so fast, over the edge and down a waterfall, rushing from room to room. I pour myself under and over and through, feeling objects brush against me as I pass by. Bookshelves, bedposts, Pappa’s slippers, a fallen dressing gown, the stubby ends of an old chair. A mouse hiding inside a hole in the wall. Mor’s needle bobbing up and down. How is this possible? I am so wide, I can see both Mor and Far at the same time, even though they are in different rooms, one wide awake, the other fast asleep. I feel my father’s breath easily, sinking through the bed into me, while Mor’s breath fights against me, against the floor. In and out, each breath swimming away, away, at the speed of her needle, up up up in out in out outoutout—let me out, get me out, I want out. That’s what Mamma is thinking, and I hear it, loud and clear. I strain my ears against the wood to get back into my own body. Nothing happens. I try again, but this time push hard with my arms that aren’t there. Nothing at all. I stop and sink, letting go, giving myself into the floor. Seven, soon to be eight… it’s time, time’s up, time to go. The needle is singing, as sure as stitches on a seam. I am inside the thread, inside her head. Mamma is ticking—onetwothreefourfivesix— Seven. Seven what? And why is it time to go? Don’t leave me, Mamma. I beg her feet, her knees, her hips, her chest, her heart, my begging spreading like a big squid into the very skin of her. It’s then that I feel it. Something is happening to Mamma. Something neither Pappa nor I have noticed. She is becoming dust. She is drier than the wood I have become. - Becoming Leidah Quoted by copying text from the epub version using BlueFire e-reader.

Violet’s not getting out of our sight,” Arion adds. There’s a moment of just staring…like everyone is trying to silently argue. “No one naked in my car,” Mom states when I just stand in my spot, waiting on them to hurry through the push and pull. You really can tell how thick the air is when too many alphas are in the room at one time, but weirdly it never feels this way when it’s just the four of them. Unless punches are thrown. Then it gets a little heavier than normal. Arion pulls on his clothes, and threads whir in the air as I quickly fashion Emit a lopsided toga that lands on his body. Everyone’s gaze swings to him like it’s weird for him and normal for me to be in a toga. Awesome. Damien muffles a sound, Emit arches an eyebrow at me, and Arion remains rigid, staying close to me but never touching me. All of us squeezing into a car together while most of them hate each other…should be fun. The storm finally stops before we board the elevator, and it’s one of those super awkward elevator moments where no one is looking at anyone or saying anything, and everyone is trying to stay in-the-moment serious. We stop on the floor just under us, after the longest thirty-five seconds ever. The doors open, and two men glance around at Emit and I in our matching togas, even though his is the fitted sheet and riding up in some funny places. He looks like a caveman who accidentally bleached and shrank his wardrobe. I palm my face, embarrassed for him. The next couple of floors are super awkward with the addition of the two new, notably uncomfortable men. Worst seventy-nine seconds ever. Math doesn’t add up? Yeah. I’m upset about those extra nine seconds as well. Poor Emit has to duck out of the unusually small elevator, and the bottom of his ass cheek plays peek-a-boo on one side. Damien finally snorts, and even Mom struggles to keep a straight face. That really pisses her off. “You’re seeing him on an off day,” I tell the two guys, who stare at my red boots for a second. I feel the need to defend Emit a little, especially since I now know he overheard all that gibberish Tiara was saying… I can’t remember all I said, and it’s worrying me now that my mind has gone off on this stupid tangent. I trip over the hem of my toga, and Arion snags me before I hit the floor, righting me and showing his hands to my mother with a quick grin. “Can’t just let her fall,” he says unapologetically. “You’re going to have to learn to deal with that,” she bites out. She has a very good point. I don’t trip very often, but things and people usually knock me around a good bit of my life. The two guys look like they want to run, so I hurry to fix this. “Really, it’s a long story, but I swear Emit—the tallest one in the fitted-sheet-toga—generally wears pants…er…I guess you guys call them trousers over here. Anyway, we had some plane problems,” I carry on, and then realize I have to account for the fact we’re both missing clothing. “Then there was a fire that miraculously only burned our clothes, because Emit put all my flames out by smothering me with his body,” I state like that’s exactly what happened. Why do they look so scared? I’m not telling a scary lie. At this point, I’ve just made it worse, and fortunately Damien takes mercy, clamping his hand over my mouth as he starts steering me toward the door before I can make it…whatever comes after worse but before the worst. “Thank you,” sounds more like “Mmdi ooooo,” against his hand, but he gets the gist, as he grins. Mom makes a frustrated sound. “Another minute, and she’d be bragging about his penis size in quest to save his dignity. Did you really want to hear that?” Damien asks her, forcing me to groan against his hand.

Now, we’ll begin,’ interrupted Mr. Torkingham, his mind returning to this world again on concluding his search for a hymn. Thereupon the racket of chair-legs on the floor signified that they were settling into their seats,—a disturbance which Swithin took advantage of by going on tiptoe across the floor above, and putting sheets of paper over knot-holes in the boarding at points where carpet was lacking, that his lamp-light might not shine down. The absence of a ceiling beneath rendered his position virtually that of one suspended in the same apartment. The parson announced the tune, and his voice burst forth with ‘Onward, Christian soldiers!’ in notes of rigid cheerfulness. In this start, however, he was joined only by the girls and boys, the men furnishing but an accompaniment of ahas and hems. Mr. Torkingham stopped, and Sammy Blore spoke,— ‘Beg your pardon, sir,—if you’ll deal mild with us a moment. What with the wind and walking, my throat’s as rough as a grater; and not knowing you were going to hit up that minute, I hadn’t hawked, and I don’t think Hezzy and Nat had, either,—had ye, souls?’ ‘I hadn’t got thorough ready, that’s true,’ said Hezekiah. ‘Quite right of you, then, to speak,’ said Mr. Torkingham. ‘Don’t mind explaining; we are here for practice. Now clear your throats, then, and at it again.’ There was a noise as of atmospheric hoes and scrapers, and the bass contingent at last got under way with a time of its own: ‘Honwerd, Christen sojers!’ ‘Ah, that’s where we are so defective—the pronunciation,’ interrupted the parson. ‘Now repeat after me: “On-ward, Christ-ian, sol-diers.”’ The choir repeated like an exaggerative echo: ‘On-wed, Chris-ting, sol-jaws!’ ‘Better!’ said the parson, in the strenuously sanguine tones of a man who got his living by discovering a bright side in things where it was not very perceptible to other people. ‘But it should not be given with quite so extreme an accent; or we may be called affected by other parishes. And, Nathaniel Chapman, there’s a jauntiness in your manner of singing which is not quite becoming. Why don’t you sing more earnestly?

A knock at the enameled door of the carriage altered them to the presence of a porter and a platform inspector just outside. Sebastian looked up and handed the baby back to Evie. He went to speak to the men. After a minute or two, he came back from the threshold with a basket. Looking both perturbed and amused, he brought it to Phoebe. “This was delivered to the station for you.” “Just now?” Phoebe asked with a nonplussed laugh. “Why, I believe it’s Ernestine’s mending basket! Don’t say the Ravenels went to the trouble of sending someone all the way to Alton to return it?” “It’s not empty,” her father said. As he set the basket in her lap, it quivered and rustled, and a blood-curdling yowl emerged. Astonished, Phoebe fumbled with the latch on the lid and opened it. The black cat sprang out and crawled frantically up her front, clinging to her shoulder with such ferocity that nothing could have detached her claws. “Galoshes!” Justin exclaimed, hurrying over to her. “Gosh-gosh!” Stephen cried in excitement. Phoebe stroked the frantic cat and tried to calm her. “Galoshes, how . . . why are you . . . oh, this is Mr. Ravenel’s doing! I’m going to murder him. You poor little thing.” Justin came to stand beside her, running his hands over the dusty, bedraggled feline. “Are we going to keep her now, Mama?” “I don’t think we have a choice,” Phoebe said distractedly. “Ivo, will you go with Justin to the dining compartment, and fetch her some food and water?” The two boys dashed off immediately. “Why has he done this?” Phoebe fretted. “He probably couldn’t make her stay at the barn, either. But she’s not meant to be a pet. She’s sure to run off as soon as we reach home.” Resuming his seat next to Evie, Sebastian said dryly, “Redbird, I doubt that creature will stray more than an arm’s length from you.” Discovering a note in the mending basket, Phoebe plucked it out and unfolded it. She instantly recognized West’s handwriting. Unemployed Feline Seeking Household Position To Whom It May Concern, I hereby offer my services as an experienced mouser and personal companion. References from a reputable family to be provided upon request. Willing to accept room and board in lieu of pay. Indoor lodgings preferred. Your servant, Galoshes the Cat Glancing up from the note, Phoebe found her parents’ questioning gazes on her. “Job application,” she explained sourly. “From the cat.” “How charming,” Seraphina exclaimed, reading over her shoulder. “‘Personal companion,’ my foot,” Phoebe muttered. “This is a semi-feral animal who has lived in outbuildings and fed on vermin.” “I wonder,” Seraphina said thoughtfully. “If she were truly feral, she wouldn’t want any contact with humans. With time and patience, she might become domesticated.” Phoebe rolled her eyes. “It seems we’ll find out.” The boys returned from the dining car with a bowl of water and a tray of refreshments. Galoshes descended to the floor long enough to devour a boiled egg, an anchovy canapé, and a spoonful of black caviar from a silver dish on ice. Licking her lips and purring, the cat jumped back into Phoebe’s lap and curled up with a sigh.

A folded triangle of paper landed in the center of his notebook. Normally he’d unfold it discreetly, but Beamis was so clueless that the note could have hit him in the head and he wouldn’t notice. Loopy script in purple pen. The paper smelled like her. What’s your #? Wow. Hunter clicked his pen and wrote below her words. I have a theory about girls who ask for your number before asking for your name. Then he folded it up and flicked it back. It took every ounce of self-control to not watch her unfold it. The paper landed back on his desk in record time. I have a theory about boys who prefer writing to texting. He put his pen against the paper. I have a theory about girls with theories. Then he waited, not looking, fighting the small smile that wanted to play on his lips. The paper didn’t reappear. After a minute, he sighed and went back to his French essay. When the folded triangle smacked him in the temple, he jumped a mile. His chair scraped the floor, and Beamis paused in his lecture, turning from the board. “Is there a problem?” “No.” Hunter coughed, covering the note with his hand. “Sorry.” When the coast was clear, he unfolded the triangle. It was a new piece of paper. My name is Kate. Kate. Hunter almost said the name out loud. What was wrong with him? It fit her perfectly, though. Short and blunt and somehow indescribably hot. Another piece of paper landed on his notebook, a small strip rolled up tiny. This time, there was only a phone number. Hunter felt like someone had punched him in the stomach and he couldn’t remember how to breathe. Then he pulled out his cell phone and typed under the desk. Come here often? Her response appeared almost immediately. First timer. Beamis was facing the classroom now, so Hunter kept his gaze up until it was safe. When he looked back, Kate had written again. I bet I could strip na**d and this guy wouldn’t even notice. Hunter’s pulse jumped. But this was easier, looking at the phone instead of into her eyes. I would notice. There was a long pause, during which he wondered if he’d said the wrong thing. Then a new text appeared. I have a theory about boys who picture you na**d before sharing their name. He smiled. My name is Hunter. Where you from? This time, her response appeared immediately. Just transferred from St. Mary’s in Annapolis. Now he was imagining her in a little plaid skirt and knee-high socks. Another text appeared. Stop imagining me in the outfit. He grinned. How did you know? You’re a boy. I’m still waiting to hear your theory on piercings. Right. IMO, you have to be crazy hot to pull off either piercings or tattoos. Otherwise you’re just enhancing the ugly. Hunter stared at the phone, wondering if she was hitting on him—or insulting him. Before he could figure it out, another message appeared. What does the tattoo on your arm say? He slid his fingers across the keys. It says “ask me about this tattoo.” Liar. Mission accomplished, I’d say. He heard a small sound from her direction and peeked over. She was still staring at her phone, but she had a smile on her face, like she was trying to stifle a giggle. Mission accomplished, he’d say.

Wherever you go, Provincetown will always take you back, at whatever age and in whatever condition. Because time moves somewhat differently there, it is possible to return after ten years or more and run into an acquaintance, on Commercial or at the A&P, who will ask mildly, as if he’d seen you the day before yesterday, what you’ve been doing with yourself. The streets of Provincetown are not in any way threatening, at least not to those with an appetite for the full range of human passions. If you grow deaf and blind and lame in Provincetown, some younger person with a civic conscience will wheel you wherever you need to go; if you die there, the marshes and dunes are ready to receive your ashes. While you’re alive and healthy, for as long as it lasts, the golden hands of the clock tower at Town Hall will note each hour with an electric bell as we below, on our purchase of land, buy or sell, paint or write or fish for bass, or trade gossip on the post office steps. The old bayfront houses will go on dreaming, at least until the emptiness between their boards proves more durable than the boards themselves. The sands will continue their slow devouring of the forests that were the Pilgrims’ first sight of North America, where man, as Fitzgerald put it, “must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.” The ghost of Dorothy Bradford will walk the ocean floor off Herring Cove, draped in seaweed, surrounded by the fleeting silver lights of fish, and the ghost of Guglielmo Marconi will tap out his messages to those even longer dead than he. The whales will breach and loll in their offshore world, dive deep into black canyons, and swim south when the time comes. Herons will browse the tidal pools; crabs with blue claws tipped in scarlet will scramble sideways over their own shadows. At sunset the dunes will take on their pink-orange light, and just after sunset the boats will go luminous in the harbor. Ashes of the dead, bits of their bones, will mingle with the sand in the salt marsh, and wind and water will further disperse the scraps of wood, shell, and rope I’ve used for Billy’s various memorials. After dark the raccoons and opossums will start on their rounds; the skunks will rouse from their burrows and head into town. In summer music will rise up. The old man with the portable organ will play for passing change in front of the public library. People in finery will sing the anthems of vanished goddesses; people who are still trying to live by fishing will pump quarters into jukeboxes that play the songs of their high school days. As night progresses, people in diminishing numbers will wander the streets (where whaling captains and their wives once promenaded, where O’Neill strode in drunken furies, where Radio Girl—who knows where she is now?—announced the news), hoping for surprises or just hoping for what the night can be counted on to provide, always, in any weather: the smell of water and its sound; the little houses standing square against immensities of ocean and sky; and the shapes of gulls gliding overhead, white as bone china, searching from their high silence for whatever they might be able to eat down there among the dunes and marshes, the black rooftops, the little lights tossing on the water as the tides move out or in.

And indeed at the hotel where I was to meet Saint-Loup and his friends the beginning of the festive season was attracting a great many people from near and far; as I hastened across the courtyard with its glimpses of glowing kitchens in which chickens were turning on spits, pigs were roasting, and lobsters were being flung alive into what the landlord called the ‘everlasting fire’, I discovered an influx of new arrivals (worthy of some Census of the People at Bethlehem such as the Old Flemish Masters painted), gathering there in groups, asking the landlord or one of his staff (who, if they did not like the look of them; would recommend accommodation elsewhere in the town) for board and lodging, while a kitchen-boy passed by holding a struggling fowl by its neck. Similarly, in the big dining-room, which I had passed through on my first day here on my way to the small room where my friend awaited me, one was again reminded of some Biblical feast, portrayed with the naïvety of former times and with Flemish exaggeration, because of the quantity of fish, chickens, grouse, woodcock, pigeons, brought in garnished and piping hot by breathless waiters who slid along the floor in their haste to set them down on the huge sideboard where they were carved immediately, but where – for many of the diners were finishing their meal as I arrived – they piled up untouched; it was as if their profusion and the haste of those who carried them in were prompted far less by the demands of those eating than by respect for the sacred text, scrupulously followed to the letter but naïvely illustrated by real details taken from local custom, and by a concern, both aesthetic and devotional, to make visible the splendour of the feast through the profusion of its victuals and the bustling attentiveness of those who served it. One of them stood lost in thought by a sideboard at the end of the room; and in order to find out from him, who alone appeared calm enough to give me an answer, where our table had been laid, I made my way forward through the various chafing-dishes that had been lit to keep warm the plates of latecomers (which did not prevent the desserts, in the centre of the room, from being displayed in the hands of a huge mannikin, sometimes supported on the wings of a duck, apparently made of crystal but actually of ice, carved each day with a hot iron by a sculptor-cook, in a truly Flemish manner), and, at the risk of being knocked down by the other waiters, went straight towards the calm one in whom I seemed to recognize a character traditionally present in these sacred subjects, since he reproduced with scrupulous accuracy the snub-nosed features, simple and badly drawn, and the dreamy expression of such a figure, already dimly aware of the miracle of a divine presence which the others have not yet begun to suspect. In addition, and doubtless in view of the approaching festive season, the tableau was reinforced by a celestial element recruited entirely from a personnel of cherubim and seraphim. A young angel musician, his fair hair framing a fourteen-year-old face, was not playing any instrument, it is true, but stood dreaming in front of a gong or a stack of plates, while less infantile angels were dancing attendance through the boundless expanse of the room, beating the air with the ceaseless flutter of the napkins, which hung from their bodies like the wings in primitive paintings, with pointed ends. Taking flight from these ill-defined regions, screened by a curtain of palms, from which the angelic waiters looked, from a distance, as if they had descended from the empyrean, I squeezed my way through to the small dining-room and to Saint-Loup’s table.

Taking hold of the ladder, she began to climb, stopping when she got to eye level with him. That, however, turned out to be a mistake, because the moment her eyes met his, she forgot everything—even the lines she’d just committed to memory—because nothing else mattered to her except . . . him. “You wrote a scene with a strong heroine in it, and one where the hero gets dangled by his feet.” “I did.” “Why?” “Because I couldn’t figure out a better way to let you know I love you, the real you, without dangling from my feet and letting you cut me down.” Lucetta’s eyes immediately took to turning a little misty. “You . . . love me?” “I do, but before we continue this, I have to admit that hanging upside down is far less pleasant than I imagined, so if you’d be so kind, I really do need you to get me down from here.” Realizing he was completely serious, but also realizing if she cut him down he’d go plummeting to the hard floor and most likely suffer a horrible injury—which certainly wouldn’t have the night turning out well at all—Lucetta looked to the side of the stage and caught Mr. Skukman’s eye. As he, along with a good number of backstage hands, walked across the boards, whispers began circulating around the theater, growing louder after Bram got released and rose to his feet. Smiling ever so charmingly at the audience, he presented them with a small bow right before he took center stage. “Ladies and gentlemen, I must beg your indulgence for just a few more minutes because you see . . . I am . . . Mr. Grimstone.” The whispers ceased immediately. Bram smiled. “I’m Mr. Grimstone, alias Mr. Bram Haverstein, and I’ve come here tonight, with all of you as my witnesses, to proclaim my love for Miss Lucetta Plum, and . . .” He dropped to one knee. “Ask her to do me the very great honor of becoming my wife.” He reached out and took hold of Lucetta’s hand. “Miss Lucetta Plum, I am completely and irrevocably in love with you, and just so we’re clear, I’m in love with the real you, not the person you turn into when you take to the stage. I love the idea that you’re completely oblivious to your unusual beauty, can outrun a goat, and . . . you fascinate me as no one ever has. I’m asking you, in front of all of these people who will probably never buy another one of my books again if you turn me down . . .” He stopped talking and turned his head to the audience. “And just to remind everyone, I will have another novel releasing soon, although I haven’t decided on a title just yet, something about a strong-willed lady, no doubt, or . . .” “You’re getting distracted,” Lucetta interrupted. Bram immediately returned his gaze to hers. “Quite right, but . . . I’ve lost my train of thought.” “You were just about to the part where you were going to ask her to marry you,” a voice called out, a voice that sounded remarkably like Abigail’s. “Thank you, Grandmother,” he called back. “You’re welcome, darling. And just to remind you, I’m not getting any younger, so you might want to hurry this proposal business along.” Grinning, Bram shook his head, brought Lucetta’s fingers to his lips, and then sobered as he held her gaze. “I love you, Lucetta, more than I ever imagined I could, and I would be so incredibly honored if you’d agree to be my wife.” For a second, Lucetta was unable to answer him because her heart had taken to rising in her throat, but after drawing in a deep breath, she managed to nod, ignoring the tears that had filled her eyes and were blurring her vision. “I would be honored to become your wife, especially since—I’m not sure when this happened, but—I’m in love with you as well.” Bram’s hold on her hand tightened for just a second, and then he was sliding a ring on her finger she hadn’t even realized he’d been holding. Before she could take even a second to admire what felt like an enormous rock on her hand, he was standing instead of kneeling, looking intently into her eyes, before he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. The

I crawled back to bed, knowing I was done for. Hours later, the phone in our room started ringing. It was George. He was not happy. "Room 312. Now!" he shouted. Bouldy got up. I tried to pull myself together, splashing my face with water and hauling on my shorts and flip flops. It was a lovely day outside, the sun was scorching hot and there wasn't a cloud in the sky, but it might as well have been a pissing wet morning in St Albans for all I cared. I felt sick to the pit of my stomach as we made the Walk of Death to Room 312, which I knew was Paul and Gus's room. When we walked in, I thought I'd arrived in downtown Baghdad. Water dripped from the ceiling. The board games were in pieces and all the plastic parts were scattered over the floor. The balcony window was wide open and I could see a bed upended by the pool outside.

Harry strained his ears. Distantly, from the floor above, and growing fainter still, he heard the voice: ‘… I smell blood … I SMELL BLOOD!’ His stomach lurched. ‘It’s going to kill someone!’ he shouted, and ignoring Ron and Hermione’s bewildered faces, he ran up the next flight of steps three at a time, trying to listen over his own pounding footsteps. Harry hurtled around the whole of the second floor, Ron and Hermione panting behind him, not stopping until they turned a corner into the last, deserted passage. ‘Harry, what was that all about?’ said Ron, wiping sweat off his face. ‘I couldn’t hear anything …’ But Hermione gave a sudden gasp, pointing down the corridor. ‘Look!’ Something was shining on the wall ahead. They approached, slowly, squinting through the darkness. Foot-high words had been daubed on the wall between two windows, shimmering in the light cast by the flaming torches. THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED. ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE. ‘What’s that thing – hanging underneath?’ said Ron, a slight quiver in his voice. As they edged nearer, Harry almost slipped over: there was a large puddle of water on the floor. Ron and Hermione grabbed him, and they inched towards the message, eyes fixed on a dark shadow beneath it. All three of them realised what it was at once, and leapt backwards with a splash. Mrs Norris, the caretaker’s cat, was hanging by her tail from the torch bracket. She was stiff as a board, her eyes wide and staring. For a few seconds, they didn’t move. Then Ron said, ‘Let’s get out of here.

only, to witness the celebration. Finally, the sheriff moved to the center of the platform and struck his staff against the wooden floor. “The meeting will be in order!” he cried out in a loud voice. The president of the Board of Overseers, John D. Long, moved to the front of the platform, carrying with him the Harvard College charter, seal, and keys. He proffered them to Lawrence, who stepped forward and, with a grave face, accepted his new role as president of Harvard College. It was only when he turned to sit in the presidential chair that he allowed himself to smile. He continued to smile as the alumni chorus sang a celebratory hymn. The opportunity he had been hoping for, for so many years, had finally presented itself. Lawrence would seize that opportunity and never look back. In his first statement

Plains (part III) Down Zabia Street through a Polish city walks Rose in white feathers It’s not a costume ball for a long time the wind will carry feathers from the beds of those departed Their bodies will not leave impressions in the grass of May meadows nor on the waves which shimmer under the saffron fins of fishes their bodies will not leave impressions in the hay when a black lightning bolt of swallows flies with a squawk through an empty barn with dirt floor Their bodies will not leave impressions on any bed sheets Down Zabia Street through a Polish city walks Rose on uneven cobblestones past houses with blue stars and boarded-up windows walks through a temple where stray cats have found their lair She walks amidst the glowing feathers on this black day she walks through your cities neutral Swedes she walks through your homes theaters places of worship she walks through your villages neutral Swiss through your clean towns clean as tears She passed as clouds pass across the sky across the earth without a trace Within me I preserved her heartbeat the silence of her eyes the warmth and hue of her lips the heft of her insides her fleeting thighs in the shadow of love the shape of her head and the reddish dusk of her falling hair and the small sun of her smile She passed as clouds pass but from where is this immeasurably long shadow being cast

Just about every kid in America wished they could be Kyle Keeley. Especially when he zoomed across their TV screens as a flaming squirrel in a holiday commercial for Squirrel Squad Six, the hysterically crazy new Lemoncello video game. Kyle’s friends Akimi Hughes and Sierra Russell were also in that commercial. They thumbed controllers and tried to blast Kyle out of the sky. He dodged every rubber band, coconut custard pie, mud clod, and wadded-up sock ball they flung his way. It was awesome. In the commercial for Mr. Lemoncello’s See Ya, Wouldn’t Want to Be Ya board game, Kyle starred as the yellow pawn. His head became the bubble tip at the top of the playing piece. Kyle’s buddy Miguel Fernandez was the green pawn. Kyle and Miguel slid around the life-size game like hockey pucks. When Miguel landed on the same square as Kyle, that meant Kyle’s pawn had to be bumped back to the starting line. “See ya!” shouted Miguel. “Wouldn’t want to be ya!” Kyle was yanked up off the ground by a hidden cable and hurled backward, soaring above the board. It was also awesome. But Kyle’s absolute favorite starring role was in the commercial for Mr. Lemoncello’s You Seriously Can’t Say That game, where the object was to get your teammates to guess the word on your card without using any of the forbidden words listed on the same card. Akimi, Sierra, Miguel, and the perpetually perky Haley Daley sat on a circular couch and played the guessers. Kyle stood in front of them as the clue giver. “Salsa,” said Kyle. “Nachos!” said Akimi. A buzzer sounded. Akimi’s guess was wrong. Kyle tried again. “Horseradish sauce!” “Something nobody ever eats,” said Haley. Another buzzer. Kyle goofed up and said one of the forbidden words: “Ketchup!” SPLAT! Fifty gallons of syrupy, goopy tomato sauce slimed him from above. It oozed down his face and dribbled off his ears. Everybody laughed. So Kyle, who loved being the class clown almost as much as he loved playing (and winning) Mr. Lemoncello’s wacky games, went ahead and read the whole list of banned words as quickly as he could. “Mustard-mayonnaise-pickle-relish.” SQUOOSH! He was drenched by buckets of yellow glop, white sludge, and chunky green gunk. The slop slid along his sleeves, trickled into his pants, and puddled on the floor. His four friends busted a gut laughing at Kyle, who was soaked in more “condiments” (the word on his card) than a mile-

Riding, balancing, and walking on a seesaw. Balancing on a Teeter-Totter—Center a board over a railroad timber. (See The Out-of-Sync Child Has Fun for ideas.) Sitting on a T-stool—A T-stool helps improve balance, posture, and attention. (See The Out-of-Sync Child Has Fun for ideas.) Balancing on a Large Therapy Ball—Your child can lie on her stomach, on her back, or sit and bounce. Some balls have handles for bouncing up and lower (hippity-hopping). Tummy Down, Head Up—Have the child lie on her stomach. On the floor, she can rock to and fro to “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”; draw on paper while listening to music, using crayons, which require her to bear down to make a mark; and play with small toys. On a swing or therapy ball, she can “draw” on the ground or carpet with a stick; throw sponges into a basket; and bat a suspended ball with a cardboard tube. Jogging—Run around the block together!

Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, said that in a meeting, when a woman speaks, 'many of the male board members start to withdraw physically, they start to look at their papers, to look at the floor...and you need to disrupt that.' she doesn't hesitate to call them out on it: 'When you're the chair, you say, "Somebody's talking. You should be listening.

Schaffer was feeling even more vague and woolly than Smith, if for different reasons. He was waking, slowly and painfully, from a very bad dream and in this dream he could taste salt in his mouth and hear a soft urgent feminine voice calling his name, calling it over and over again. In normal times Schaffer would have been all for soft feminine voices, urgent or not, but he wished that this one would stop for it was all part of the bad dream and in this bad dream someone had split his head in half and he knew the pain wouldn't go until he woke up. He moaned, put the palms of his hands on the floor and tried to prop himself up. It took a long time, it took an eternity, for someone had laid one of the girders from the Forth bridge across his back, but at last he managed to straighten both his arms, his head hanging down between them. His head didn't feel right, it didn't even feel like his head, for, apart from the fact that there seemed to be a butcher's cleaver stuck in it, it seemed to be stuffed with cotton wool, grey and fuzzy round the edges. He shook his head to clear it and this was a mistake for the top of his head fell off. Or so it felt to Schaffer as the blinding coruscation of multi-coloured lights before his eyes arranged themselves into oddly kaleidoscopic patterns. He opened his eyes and the patterns dimmed and the lights began to fade: gradually, beneath his eyes the pattern of floorboards began to resolve themselves, and, on the board, the outlines of hands. His own hands. He was awake, but this was one of those bad dreams which stayed with you even when you were awake. He could still taste salt—the salt of blood—his head still felt as if one incautious shake would have it rolling across the floor and that soft and urgent voice was still calling.

first floor of a small hotel on the outskirts of San Antonio. Cooper made himself a bet as he walked in. Neon signs for Shiner Bock, smoke-stained drop ceiling, jukebox in the corner, pool table with worn felt, chalkboard with specials. Female bartender, a blonde showing dark roots. The specials turned out to be on a dry-erase board, and the bartendress was a redhead. Cooper smiled. About half the tables were occupied, mostly men but a few women too. The tabletops held plastic pitchers and cigarette packs and cell phones. The music was too loud, some country-rock act

As long as you have any floor space at all, you have room for books! Just make two stacks of books the same height, place them three or four feet apart, lay a board across them, and repeat. Violà! Bookshelves!

I tap my toes on the floor, admiring the boots from this vantage, and open up my laptop. I’ll just take a quick peek at my Pinterest board first to see what else these boots would look good with. Everything. They look good with everything, I decide after a half hour of pinning. Which somehow ended with me pinning knitting patterns. I don’t knit, but Pinterest is a bitch that way.

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Please tell me we don’t have to go all the way upstairs for a condom,” she said. “Back pocket.” She leaned with him as he fished it out, then tried to help him get his jeans down over his hips. Her foot hit the coffee table, which snagged on the throw rug and sent the Scrabble tiles sliding all over the board. She laughed as he tore open the condom packet. “Now nobody wins.” “I was ahead.” He put one hand on her hip, using the other to guide himself into her. “So I win.” Emma moaned as he filled her, bracing herself against the couch with a hand on either side of his head. “The game wasn’t over. It’s a draw.” He pulled down on her hips as he drove up into her, making her gasp. “Ties are for pussies. Admit I won.” She looked down into his blue eyes, crinkled with amusement as he grinned at her. God, she loved…having sex with this man. “One good word isn’t a victory.” “That’s not what the score sheet said.” He stopped moving, and when she tried to rock against him, he held down on her hips so she couldn’t move, either. Then he had the nerve to chuckle at her growl of sexual frustration. “Admit it. I can sit here all night.” “Oh, really?” She went straight for a known weak spot—nipping at his earlobe before sucking it into her mouth. He let go of her hips with one hand, intending to push her mouth away, but she rocked her hips. He groaned and put his hand back. She breathed softly against his ear and then ran her tongue along the outside. “Admit I was going to win,” she whispered, “because I can do this all night.” With one leg, he kicked at the table, sending it over and the letter tiles flying. Before Emma could react, she was on her back on the throw rug with Sean between her legs and her hands held over her head. “I don’t lose.” He crossed her wrists so he could hold them with one hand, then used the other to pull her leg up over his hip so he was totally buried in her. “Give up?” She shook her head, but couldn’t hold back the sigh as he oh, so slowly withdrew almost completely and then just as slowly filled her again. “You’re cheating.” He did it again and again, the slow friction delicious and frustrating, until they were both trembling and on the edge. Then, as he was pulling out of her once again with a self-control that made her want to scream, it became a matter of life or death, because she was going to die if she didn’t get what her body was looking for. “Okay, fine. You win.” He drove into her hard, his fingers biting into her wrists before he released them so he could lift her legs to her shoulder. She cried his name as his fingers dug into her hips and he gave them what they both wanted. When he collapsed on top of her, breathing hard against her neck, she wrapped her legs and arms around him, holding him close. “Another one for the win column,” he said once they’d caught their breath. “It has an asterisk, though, because you totally cheated.” “All’s fair in sex and Scrabble, baby.” He propped his head on his hand and smiled down at her. “What should we play next?” “I’ve still got clothes on. You’ve still got clothes on. Maybe we should break out a deck of cards.” “You’re my kinda girl, Emma Shaw,” he said, and thankfully, he was in the process of getting up off the floor, because she didn’t think she did a good job of hiding how happy those words made her.

tagged along. He felt that Marvin was now his responsibility, and he wanted to keep an eye on him. No telling what the captain might say that could possibly upset Marvin. A brisk, cold wind was blowing as the passengers stepped from the ferry onto the dock at Ostend. Marvin later commented that he had never felt such raw weather, but his memory was short. He had forgotten the freezing winters we had lived through when we were growing up in Washington, D.C. From the waterfront at Ostend, Freddy led Marvin, Bubby, and Eugenie to a small boarding house at 77 Rue Promenade, just a block from the beach. Freddy’s wife, Lilliane, a joyous woman, was waiting for them with open arms. She had already prepared a room on the fifth floor for Freddy’s guests and had a hot meal simmering on the stove. The boarding house was owned by Freddy and managed by his wife. They lived in the basement apartment, along with their two young daughters. Lilliane had told them that a new playmate would be arriving, and they had eagerly anticipated meeting Bubby. Freddy seemed happy too, now that Marvin was safely in tow. As for Marvin, he was simply relieved to be warm again and on dry land. From the moment she first saw Marvin,

Sort pills. Write note to family. Fold blanket. I am alone. Alone in a dark, unfamiliar room filled with piles and piles of stuff, reminiscent of a neglected storage locker. I know researchers are observing me from behind one-way glass—that this is an experiment in empathy, that we are, in fact, on the sprawling campus of a pharmaceutical company in New Jersey, that I can rip off the headphones at any moment and return to my present life, my real life—but this offers me no comfort. I can barely see through the goggles. My feet hurt. Every step is agony, the sharp plastic spikes digging into my soles. Sort pills. Write note to family. Fold blanket. I try to make out the shapes around me. I see an ironing board, a stack of sweaters. A ball of twine. My determination to cross items off any to-do list—always a strong suit of mine—feels slippery. Suddenly, I am a child playing hide-and-seek in the dark. Counting. Eyes squeezed shut. Terrified. Wondering if anyone will ever find me. Blanket. Pills. Note. I keep repeating the words like a prayer so I can remember them through the terrible din. The inside of my head is a needle against a scratched record, skipping, skipping. I feel my way around a cluttered table. A pill case! I try to pick it up. I barely feel it in the palm of my hand. After several tries, I get it open. Then I begin to sort the pills as best I can. Most of them spill to the floor, and I am suddenly, irrationally furious. I move around the table, supporting myself on my hands to take the pressure off my feet. I push an iron out of the way, a magazine, a wooden hanger. The notebook. I find the notebook. My gloved fingers won’t close around a pencil, so I hold it the way a child would, in my fist. By now it all feels nearly futile. I’m on the verge of tears. What is the last task? Through the static, I remember: the blanket. I have to fold it. By now I’m dizzy, depleted. What difference can it possibly make? Who cares? I do a shitty job of folding the blanket and then—then I just sit down in a chair and wait for M. to rescue me. —

orderlies clanged buckets as they mopped the floor, porters pushed squeaking

Jewel and I come up from the field, following the path in single file. Although I am fifteen feet ahead of him, anyone watching us from the cottonhouse can see Jewel’s frayed and broken straw hat a full head above my own. The path runs straight as a plumb-line, worn smooth by feet and baked brick-hard by July, between the green rows of laidby cotton, to the cottonhouse in the center of the field, where it turns and circles the cottonhouse at four soft right angles and goes on across the field again, worn so by feet in fading precision. The cottonhouse is of rough logs, from between which the chinking has long fallen. Square, with a broken roof set at a single pitch, it leans in empty and shimmering dilapidation in the sunlight, a single broad window in two opposite walls giving onto the approaches of the path. When we reach it I turn and follow the path which circles the house. Jewel, fifteen feet behind me, looking straight ahead, steps in a single stride through the window. Still staring straight ahead, his pale eyes like wood set into his wooden face, he crosses the floor in four strides with the rigid gravity of a cigar store Indian dressed in patched overalls and endued with life from the hips down, and steps in a single stride through the opposite window and into the path again just as I come around the corner. In single file and five feet apart and Jewel now in front, we go on up the path toward the foot of the bluff. Tull’s wagon stands beside the spring, hitched to the rail, the reins wrapped about the seat stanchion. In the wagon bed are two chairs. Jewel stops at the spring and takes the gourd from the willow branch and drinks. I pass him and mount the path, beginning to hear Cash’s saw. When I reach the top he has quit sawing. Standing in a litter of chips, he is fitting two of the boards together. Between the shadow spaces they are yellow as gold, like soft gold, bearing on their flanks in smooth undulations the marks of the adze blade: a good carpenter, Cash is. He holds the two planks on the trestle, fitted along the edges in a quarter of the finished box. He kneels and squints along the edge of them, then he lowers them and takes up the adze. A good carpenter. Addie Bundren could not want a better one, a better box to lie in. It will give her confidence and comfort. I go on to the house, followed by the                                     Chuck.   Chuck.   Chuck.of the adze.

When the folks first left, and the evening of the first day came, the hunting cats slouched in from the fields and mewed on the porch. And when no one came out, the cats crept through the open doors and walked mewing through the empty rooms. And then they went back to the fields and were wild cats from then on, hunting gophers and field mice, and sleeping in ditches in the daytime. When the night came, the bats, which had stopped at the doors for fear of light, swooped into the houses and sailed about through the empty rooms, and in a little while they stayed in dark room corners during the day, folded their wings high, and hung head-down among the rafters, and the smell of their droppings was in the empty houses. And the mice moved in and stored weed seeds in corners, in boxes in the backs of drawers in the kitchens. And weasels came in the hunt the mice, and the brown owls flew shrieking in and out again. Now there came a little shower. The weeds sprang up in front of the doorstep, where they had not been allowed, and grass grew up through the porch boards. The houses were vacant, and a vacant house falls quickly apart. Splits started up the sheathing from the rusted nails. A dust settled on the floors, and only mouse and weasel and cat tracks disturbed it. On a night the wind loosened a shingle and flipped it to the ground. The next wind pried into the whole where the shingle had been, lifted off three, and the next, a dozen. The midday sun burned through the hole and threw a glaring spot on the floor. The wild cats crept in from the fields at night, but they did not mew at the doorstep any more. They moved like shadows of a cloud across the moon, into the rooms to hunt the mice. And on windy nights the doors banged, and the ragged curtains fluttered in the broken windows.

He watched her pace the floor in her bare feet---the floor she'd scrubbed clean seven times now from the mess and afterbirth of new babies. She'd gotten out the stains [...] in the floor she was pacing now, walking up and down the ordinary wooden boards with bare feet like Moses at the burning bush. Like something sacred had happened there; holy ground.

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But Silicon Valley was filling up newspapers with dozens of pages of employment ads. One Atari ad in 1974 read simply, “Have Fun, Make Money.” The day the ad ran, an unkempt eighteen-year-old who had grown up in nearby Cupertino showed up at the front desk of the game maker. He refused to leave without a job. The receptionist relayed the message to a senior engineer and asked whether she should call the cops. Instead the engineer, Al Alcorn, engaged with the “hippie-looking kid,” learning that he was a dropout from the literary Reed College with no formal engineering background but deep enthusiasm for technology. Despite the negatives, Alcorn hired Steve Jobs as a technician at $5 an hour. Atari’s unconventional hiring practices didn’t dissuade Sequoia Capital from making an investment. Neither did Atari’s manufacturing floor: “You go on the factory tour and the marijuana in the air would knock you to your knees—where they were manufacturing the product!” Sequoia’s Don Valentine would note later. Japanese quality control it wasn’t. Still, the venture capitalist took the big picture view to his board duties, suggesting that prudishness would have been futile: “What would I say, get a higher brand of marijuana?” This too was a fundamental shift, the counterculture of San Francisco and Berkeley permeating south.

But Silicon Valley was filling up newspapers with dozens of pages of employment ads. One Atari ad in 1974 read simply, “Have Fun, Make Money.” The day the ad ran, an unkempt eighteen-year-old who had grown up in nearby Cupertino showed up at the front desk of the game maker. He refused to leave without a job. The receptionist relayed the message to a senior engineer and asked whether she should call the cops. Instead the engineer, Al Alcorn, engaged with the “hippie-looking kid,” learning that he was a dropout from the literary Reed College with no formal engineering background but deep enthusiasm for technology. Despite the negatives, Alcorn hired Steve Jobs as a technician at $5 an hour. Atari’s unconventional hiring practices didn’t dissuade Sequoia Capital from making an investment. Neither did Atari’s manufacturing floor: “You go on the factory tour and the marijuana in the air would knock you to your knees—where they were manufacturing the product!” Sequoia’s Don Valentine would note later. Japanese quality control it wasn’t. Still, the venture capitalist took the big picture view to his board duties, suggesting that prudishness would have been futile: “What would I say, get a higher brand of marijuana?” This too was a fundamental shift, the counterculture of San Francisco and Berkeley permeating south. The

Informal Procedure in Small Boards + Board members may raise a hand instead of standing when seeking to obtain the floor, and may remain seated while making motions or speaking. + Motions need not be seconded. + A board member may speak any number of times (not just twice) on a debatable question, except that the regular rules apply to appeals (see pp. 90–91). + Informal discussion of a subject is permitted while no motion is pending. + Votes can be taken initially by a show of hands. + If a proposal is perfectly clear to everyone, it may be voted on even though no formal motion has been made. + In putting questions to a vote, the chairman need not stand. + If the chairman is a member of the board, he or she can, without giving up the chair, participate in debate, make motions, and vote on all questions. E. VALIDITY OF BOARD ACTION

The plastic world has colonized us. When we climb into the car, airplane, board ships, when we purchase contemporary cuisines, get involved in the television world, from the studio and materials up the image of the world, we enter the world of artificial chemical universes, those of the cinema and their advertisements, of what we should buy and acquire. It is like this with the café-bars and discos, in other words the pleasure of children, and the same with the food that we consume, and the hospitals and schools, the hotels, all chemicals, a substitute. The ventilation of hotels without windows, the doors without keys, similarly the walls and doors and beds and baths, the water, the carpet and the floors. Everything a sham, paradises for allergies. One can say the same of the tones and music, and the attack on clothing cannot be overlooked, as well as the attitude of men resulting from it. The computers are made of this material and therewith our thought, our memory, the simulation of life. And thus life in genetic research begins and ends as a plastic creation and plastic death. Already the announcement has come to us that the museum bring the entire program closer to us on video screens, enlarged, interpreted, free and democratic and individually accessible. We will live in Leonardo’s world. The ground is prepared, now begins the attack on the blood. Much strength will be necessary to survive it.