Jumping Into The Week Like Quotes

Now, this pair," he waved the shoes he held, "are new. They haven't been walked a mile, and for new shoes like these I charge a talent, maybe a talent and two." He pointed at my feet. "Those shoes, on the other hand, are used, and I don't sell used shoes." He turned his back on me and started to tidy his workbench rather aimlessly, humming to himself... I knew that he was trying to do me a favor, and a week ago I would have jumped at the opportunity for free shoes. But for some reason I didn't feel right about it. I quietly gathered up my things and left a pair of copper jots on his stool before I left. Why? Because pride is a strange thing, and because generosity deserves generosity in return. But mostly because it felt like the right thing to do, and that is reason enough.

love. she liberated me to life, she continued to do that. and when she was in her final sickness i went out to san francisco and the doctor said she had 3 weeks to live, i asked her "would you come to north carolina?" she said yes. she had emphysema and lung cancer, i brought her to my home. she lived for a year and a half ..and when she was finally in extemis, she was on oxygen and fighting cancer for her life and i remembered her liberating me, and i said i hoped i would be able to liberate her, she deserved that from me. she deserved a great daughter and she got one. so in her last days, i said "i understand some people need permission to go… as i understand it you may have done what god put you here to do. you were a great worker, you must've been a great lover cause a lot of men and if I'm not wrong maybe a couple of woman risked their lives to love you. you were a piss poor mother of small children but a you were great mother of young adults, and if you need permission to go, i liberate you". and i went back to my house, and something said go back- i was in my pajamas, i jumped in my car and ran and the nurse said "she just gone". you see love liberates. it doesn't bind, love says i love you. i love you if you're in china, i love you if you're across town, i love you if you're in harlem, i love you. i would like to be near you, i would like to have your arms around me i would like to have your voice in my ear but thats not possible now, i love you so go. love liberates it doesn't hold. thats ego. love liberates.

11 WAYS TO BE UNREMARKABLY AVERAGE 1. Accept what people tell you at face value. 2. Don’t question authority. 3. Go to college because you’re supposed to, not because you want to learn something. 4. Go overseas once or twice in your life, to somewhere safe like England. 5. Don’t try to learn another language; everyone else will eventually learn English. 6. Think about starting your own business, but never do it. 7. Think about writing a book, but never do it. 8. Get the largest mortgage you qualify for and spend 30 years paying for it. 9. Sit at a desk 40 hours a week for an average of 10 hours of productive work. 10. Don’t stand out or draw attention to yourself. 11. Jump through hoops. Check off boxes.

On May 26th, 2003, Aaron Ralston was hiking, a boulder fell on his right hand, he waited four days, he then amputated his own arm with a pocketknife. On New Year’s Eve, a woman was bungee jumping, the cord broke, she fell into a river and had to swim back to land in crocodile-infested waters with a broken collarbone. Claire Champlin was smashed in the face by a five-pound watermelon being propelled by a slingshot. Mathew Brobst was hit by a javelin. David Striegl was actually punched in the mouth by a kangaroo. The most amazing part of these stories is when asked about the experience they all smiled, shrugged and said “I guess things could’ve been worse.” So go ahead, tell me you’re having a bad day. Tell me about the traffic. Tell me about your boss. Tell me about the job you’ve been trying to quit for the past four years. Tell me the morning is just a townhouse burning to the ground and the snooze button is a fire extinguisher. Tell me the alarm clock stole the keys to your smile, drove it into 7 am and the crash totaled your happiness. Tell me. Tell me how blessed are we to have tragedy so small it can fit on the tips of our tongues. When Evan lost his legs he was speechless. When my cousin was assaulted she didn’t speak for 48 hours. When my uncle was murdered, we had to send out a search party to find my father’s voice. Most people have no idea that tragedy and silence often have the exact same address. When your day is a museum of disappointments, hanging from events that were outside of your control, when you feel like your guardian angel put in his two weeks notice two months ago and just decided not to tell you, when it seems like God is just a babysitter that’s always on the phone, when you get punched in the esophagus by a fistful of life. Remember, every year two million people die of dehydration. So it doesn’t matter if the glass is half full or half empty. There’s water in the cup. Drink it and stop complaining. Muscle is created by lifting things that are designed to weigh us down. When your shoulders are heavy stand up straight and call it exercise. Life is a gym membership with a really complicated cancellation policy. Remember, you will survive, things could be worse, and we are never given anything we can’t handle. When the whole world crumbles, you have to build a new one out of all the pieces that are still here. Remember, you are still here. The human heart beats approximately 4,000 times per hour and each pulse, each throb, each palpitation is a trophy, engraved with the words “You are still alive.” You are still alive. So act like it.

Anxiety I struggle with things that are as easy to others as breathing. Like breathing. Like answering the phone. Or sending that email I have been meaning to for weeks. I panic when I am asked out to dinner, even if it’s with someone I really want to see. It’s hard for me to commit to anything, and when I do, I overthink it until my brain tells me I have made a mistake, like a rat caught in a maze, trying to claw its way out. I don’t know why I am like this. People ask me why I can’t do anything without jumping through a thousand thoughts, like hoops. But sometimes I wonder if my inability to function in the real world is really such a bad thing. I wonder if that’s why I’ve spent so much time sheltered in my imagination. And because I can’t live in the real world, I create worlds to belong to. And I wonder if the very thing I’ve always been told is my weakness, has all along, been my strength.

I mean it," Gabriel said. "Do you know that girl that came after us nearly gave me a heart attack? She said Trouble's in trouble. Again. Second time in a week. And what do I see when we get to the hallway? Trouble jumping from the fucking second floor, does a barrel roll and hobbles up to get back in the fight. And you're on top of some motherfucker on top of Silas. Fucking beautiful. So that's like quadruple grounding because you went in twice. I swear if you go over that balcony again, I'm going to break your damn feet so you can't go anywhere near it.

My delightful, my love, my life, I don’t understand anything: how can you not be with me? I’m so infinitely used to you that I now feel myself lost and empty: without you, my soul. You turn my life into something light, amazing, rainbowed—you put a glint of happiness on everything—always different: sometimes you can be smoky-pink, downy, sometimes dark, winged—and I don’t know when I love your eyes more—when they are open or shut. It’s eleven p.m. now: I’m trying with all the force of my soul to see you through space; my thoughts plead for a heavenly visa to Berlin via air . . . My sweet excitement . . . Today I can’t write about anything except my longing for you. I’m gloomy and fearful: silly thoughts are swarming—that you’ll stumble as you jump out of a carriage in the underground, or that someone will bump into you in the street . . . I don’t know how I’ll survive the week. My tenderness, my happiness, what words can I write for you? How strange that although my life’s work is moving a pen over paper, I don’t know how to tell you how I love, how I desire you. Such agitation—and such divine peace: melting clouds immersed in sunshine—mounds of happiness. And I am floating with you, in you, aflame and melting—and a whole life with you is like the movement of clouds, their airy, quiet falls, their lightness and smoothness, and the heavenly variety of outline and tint—my inexplicable love. I cannot express these cirrus-cumulus sensations. When you and I were at the cemetery last time, I felt it so piercingly and clearly: you know it all, you know what will happen after death—you know it absolutely simply and calmly—as a bird knows that, fluttering from a branch, it will fly and not fall down . . . And that’s why I am so happy with you, my lovely, my little one. And here’s more: you and I are so special; the miracles we know, no one knows, and no one loves the way we love. What are you doing now? For some reason I think you’re in the study: you’ve got up, walked to the door, you are pulling the door wings together and pausing for a moment—waiting to see if they’ll move apart again. I’m tired, I’m terribly tired, good night, my joy. Tomorrow I’ll write you about all kinds of everyday things. My love.

We take it for granted that life moves forward. You build memories; you build momentum.You move as a rower moves: facing backwards. You can see where you've been, but not where you’re going. And your boat is steered by a younger version of you. It's hard not to wonder what life would be like facing the other way. Avenoir. You'd see your memories approaching for years, and watch as they slowly become real. You’d know which friendships will last, which days are important, and prepare for upcoming mistakes. You'd go to school, and learn to forget. One by one you'd patch things up with old friends, enjoying one last conversation before you meet and go your separate ways. And then your life would expand into epic drama. The colors would get sharper, the world would feel bigger. You'd become nothing other than yourself, reveling in your own weirdness. You'd fall out of old habits until you could picture yourself becoming almost anything. Your family would drift slowly together, finding each other again. You wouldn't have to wonder how much time you had left with people, or how their lives would turn out. You'd know from the start which week was the happiest you’ll ever be, so you could relive it again and again. You'd remember what home feels like, and decide to move there for good. You'd grow smaller as the years pass, as if trying to give away everything you had before leaving. You'd try everything one last time, until it all felt new again. And then the world would finally earn your trust, until you’d think nothing of jumping freely into things, into the arms of other people. You'd start to notice that each summer feels longer than the last. Until you reach the long coasting retirement of childhood. You'd become generous, and give everything back. Pretty soon you’d run out of things to give, things to say, things to see. By then you'll have found someone perfect; and she'll become your world. And you will have left this world just as you found it. Nothing left to remember, nothing left to regret, with your whole life laid out in front of you, and your whole life left behind.

New Rule: Stop pretending your drugs are morally superior to my drugs because you get yours at a store. This week, they released the autopsy report on Anna Nicole Smith, and the cause of death was what I always thought it was: mad cow. No, it turns out she had nine different prescription drugs in her—which, in the medical field, is known as the “full Limbaugh.” They opened her up, and a Walgreens jumped out. Antidepressants, anti-anxiety pills, sleeping pills, sedatives, Valium, methadone—this woman was killed by her doctor, who is a glorified bartender. I’m not going to say his name, but only because (a) I don’t want to get sued, and (b) my back is killing me. This month marks the thirty-fifth anniversary of a famous government report. I was sixteen in 1972, and I remember how excited we were when Nixon’s much ballyhooed National Commission on Drug Abuse came out and said pot should be legalized. It was a moment of great hope for common sense—and then, just like Bush did with the Iraq Study Group, Nixon took the report and threw it in the garbage, and from there the ’70s went right into disco and colored underpants. This week in American Scientist, a magazine George Bush wouldn’t read if he got food poisoning in Mexico and it was the only thing he could reach from the toilet, described a study done in England that measured the lethality of various drugs, and found tobacco and alcohol far worse than pot, LSD, or Ecstasy—which pretty much mirrors my own experiments in this same area. The Beatles took LSD and wrote Sgt. Pepper—Anna Nicole Smith took legal drugs and couldn’t remember the number for nine-one-one. I wish I had more time to go into the fact that the drug war has always been about keeping black men from voting by finding out what they’re addicted to and making it illegal—it’s a miracle our government hasn’t outlawed fat white women yet—but I leave with one request: Would someone please just make a bumper sticker that says, “I’m a stoner, and I vote.

Time is the only magic, he said, "And Marids swim through time like the sea. Think: if you hurt yourself, and I bandage it, and after weeks and weeks it gets well and there's no scar, that's not magic at all. But if you hurt yourself and I touch you and it heals in a moment, you'd call me magic before your skin closed. It's not magic to cook a feast, roasting and baking and frying for hours, but if you blink and it's steaming in front of you, it's a spell. If you work for what you want and save for it and plan it out just as precisely as you possibly can, it's not even surprising if you get it on the other side of a month or a year. But if you snap your fingers and it happens as soon as you want t, every wizard will want to know you socially. If you life straight through a hundred years and watch yourself unfold at one second per second, one hour per hour, that's just being alive. If you go faster, you're a time traveler. If you jump over your unfolding and see how it all comes out, that's fate. But's all healing and cooking and planning and living, just the same. The only difference is time.

Hey, I got an idea, let’s go to the movies. I wanna go to the movies, I want to take you all to the movies. Let’s go and experience the art of the cinema. Let’s begin with the Scream Of Fear, and we are going to haunt us for the rest of our lives. And then let’s go see The Great Escape, and spend our summer jumping our bikes, just like Steve McQueen over barb wire. And then let’s catch The Seven Samurai for some reason on PBS, and we’ll feel like we speak Japanese because we can read the subtitles and hear the language at the same time. And then let’s lose sleep the night before we see 2001: A Space Odyssey because we have this idea that it’s going to change forever the way we look at films. And then let’s go see it four times in one year. And let’s see Woodstock three times in one year and let’s see Taxi Driver twice in one week. And let’s see Close Encounters of the Third Kind just so we can freeze there in mid-popcorn. And when the kids are old enough, let’s sit them together on the sofa and screen City Lights and Stage Coach and The Best Years of Our Lives and On The Waterfront and Midnight Cowboy and Five Easy Pieces and The Last Picture Show and Raging Bull and Schindler’s List… so that they can understand how the human condition can be captured by this amalgam of light and sound and literature we call the cinema.

First I need to do something.’ He pulled me closer towards him until our lips were almost touching. ‘What might that be?’ I managed to stutter, closing my eyes, anticipating the warmth of his lips against mine. But the kiss didn’t come. I opened my eyes. Alex had jumped to his feet. ‘Swim,’ he said, grinning at me. ‘Come on.’ ‘Swim?’ I pouted, unable to hide my disappointment that he wanted to swim rather than make out with me. Alex pulled his T-shirt off in one swift move. My eyes fell straightaway to his chest – which was tanned, smooth and ripped with muscle, and which, when you studied it as I had done, in detail, you discovered wasn’t a six-pack but actually a twelve-pack. My eyes flitted to the shadowed hollows where his hips disappeared into his shorts, causing a flutter in parts of my body that up until three weeks ago had been flutter-dormant. Alex’s hands dropped to his shorts and he started undoing his belt. I reassessed the swimming option. I could definitely do swimming. He shrugged off his shorts, but before I could catch an eyeful of anything, he was off, jogging towards the water. I paused for a nanosecond, weighing up my embarrassment at stripping naked over my desire to follow him. With a deep breath, I tore off my dress then kicked off my underwear and started running towards the sea, praying Nate wasn’t doing a fly-by. The water was warm and flat as a bath. I could see Alex in the distance, his skin gleaming in the now inky moonlight. When I got close to him, his hand snaked under the water, wrapped round my waist and pulled me towards him. I didn’t resist because I’d forgotten in that instant how to swim. And then he kissed me and I prayed silently and fervently that he took my shudder to be the effect of the water. I tried sticking myself onto him like a barnacle, but eventually Alex managed to pull himself free, holding my wrists in his hand so I couldn’t reattach. His resolve was as solid as a nuclear bunker’s walls. Alex had said there were always chinks. But I couldn’t seem to find the one in his armour. He swam two long strokes away from me. I trod water and stayed where I was, feeling confused, glad that the night was dark enough to hide my expression. ‘I’m just trying to protect your honour,’ he said, guessing it anyway. I groaned and rolled my eyes. When was he going to understand that I was happy for him to protect every other part of me, just not my honour?

Sophie stared at the door, trying desperately to keep her eyes focused on anything but Benedict. She'd spent all week hoping for a glimpse,but now that he was here, all she wanted was to escape. If she looked at his face, her eyes inevitably strayed to his lips. And if she looked at his lips, her thoughts immediately went to their kiss. And if she thought about the kiss... "I need that thimble," she blurted out, jumping to her feet. There were some things one just shouldn't think about in public. "So you said," Benedict murmured, one of his eyebrows quirking up into a perfect-and perfectly arrogant-arch. "It's downstairs," she muttered. "In my room." "But your room is upstairs," Hyacinth said. Sophie could have killed her. "That's what I said," she ground out. "No," Hyacinth said in a matter-of-fact tone, "you didn't." "Yes," Lady Bridgerton said, "she did. I heard her." Sophie twisted her head sharply to look at Lady Bridgerton and knew in an instant that the older woman had lied. "I have to get that thimble," she said, for what seemed like the thirtieth time. She hurried toward the doorway, gulping as she grew close to Benedict. "Wouldn't want you to hurt yourself," he said, stepping aside to allow her through the doorway.But as she brushed past him, he leaned forward, whispering, "Coward.

I knew that he was trying to do me a favor, and a week ago I would have jumped at the opportunity for free shoes. But for some reason I didn’t feel right about it. I quietly gathered up my things and left a pair of copper jots on his stool before I left. Why? Because pride is a strange thing, and because generosity deserves generosity in return. But mostly because it felt like the right thing to do, and that is reason enough.

My roommates and I looked at each other and screamed, "BEANS!" in unison, like we hadn't eaten in weeks.We were holding hands, jumping up and down and celebrating, while the guy at the register tried to understand how we functioned on a normal basis.

Winter here arrives, stays, persists, goes away a little, then comes back and people start leaping off the bridges. That's approximately March, when jumping is at its apogee, but even then, winter isn't over. What it likes to do is go away for a week in April and then return for three days and finish grandpa off.

In 2012, I turned fifty-six. Hugh and his longtime girlfriend took me out to dinner. On the way home I remembered a bit of old folklore—probably you’ve heard it—about how to boil a frog. You put it in cold water, then start turning up the heat. If you do it gradually, the frog is too stupid to jump out. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I decided it was an excellent metaphor for growing old. When I was a teenager, I looked at over-fifties with pity and unease: they walked too slow, they talked too slow, they watched TV instead of going out to movies and concerts, their idea of a great party was hotpot with the neighbors and tucked into bed after the eleven o’clock news. But—like most other fifty-, sixty-, and seventysomethings who are in relative good health—I didn’t mind it so much when my turn came. Because the brain doesn’t age, although its ideas about the world may harden and there’s a greater tendency to run off at the mouth about how things were in the good old days. (I was spared that, at least, because most of my so-called good old days had been spent as a full-bore, straight-on-for-Texas drug addict.) I think for most people, life’s deceptive deliriums begin to fall away after fifty. The days speed up, the aches multiply, and your gait slows down, but there are compensations. In calmness comes appreciation, and—in my case—a determination to be as much of a do-right-daddy as possible in the time I had left. That meant ladling out soup once a week at a homeless shelter in Boulder, and working for three or four political candidates with the radical idea that Colorado should not be paved over.

I'm jittery.It's like the animatronic band from Chuck E. Cheese is throwing a jamboree in my stomach. I've always hated Chuck E. Cheese. Why am I thinking about Chuck E. Cheese? I don't know why I'm nervous.I'm just seeing my mom again. And Seany.And Bridge! Bridge said she'd come. St. Clair's connecting flight to San Francisco doesn't leave for another three hours,so we board the train that runs between terminals,and he walks me to the arrivals area.We've been quiet since we got off the plane. I guess we're tired. We reach the security checkpoint,and he can't go any farther. Stupid TSA regulations.I wish I could introduce him to my family.The Chuck E. Cheese band kicks it up a notch,which is weird, because I'm not nervous about leaving him. I'll see him again in two weeks. "All right,Banana.Suppose this is goodbye." He grips the straps of his backpack,and I do the same. This is the moment we're supposed to hug. For some reason,I can't do it. "Tell your mom hi for me. I mean, I know I don't know her. She just sounds really nice. And I hope she's okay." He smiles softly. "Thanks.I'll tell her." "Call me?" "Yeah,whatever. You'll be so busy with Bridge and what's-his-name that you'll forget all about your English mate, St. Clair." "Ha! So you are English!" I poke him in the stomach. He grabs my hand and we wrestle, laughing. "I claim....no...nationality." I break free. "Whatever,I totally caught you. Ow!" A gray-haired man in sunglasses bumps his red plaid suitcase into my legs. "Hey,you! Apologize!" St. Clair says,but the guy is already too far away to hear. I rub my shins. "It's okay, we're in the way. I should go." Time to hug again. Why can't we do it? Finally, I step forward and put my arms around him. He's stiff,and it's awkward, especially with our backpacks in the way.I smell his hair again. Oh heavens. We pull apart. "Have fun at the show tonight" he says. "I will.Have a good flight." "Thanks." He bites his thumbnail,and then I'm through security and riding down the escalator. I look back one last time. St. Clair jumps up and down, waving at me.I burst into laughter, and his face lights up.The escalator slides down. He's lost from view. I swallow hard and turn around.And then-there they are.Mom has a gigantic smile, and Seany is jumping and waving, just like St. Clair.

A woman named Cynthia once told me a story about the time her father had made plans to take her on a night out in San Francisco. Twelve-year-old Cynthia and her father had been planning the “date” for months. They had a whole itinerary planned down to the minute: she would attend the last hour of his presentation, and then meet him at the back of the room at about four-thirty and leave quickly before everyone tried to talk to him. They would catch a tram to Chinatown, eat Chinese food (their favourite), shop for a souvenir, see the sights for a while and then “catch a flick” as her dad liked to say. Then they would grab a taxi back to the hotel, jump in the pool for a quick swim (her dad was famous for sneaking in when the pool was closed), order a hot fudge sundae from room service, and watch the late, late show. They discussed the details over and over again before they left. The anticipation was part of the whole experience. This was all going according to plan until, as her father was leaving the convention centre, he ran into an old college friend and business associate. It had been years since they had seen each other, and Cynthia watched as they embraced enthusiastically. His friend said, in effect: “I am so glad you are doing some work with our company now. When Lois and I heard about it we thought it would be perfect. We want to invite you, and of course Cynthia, to get a spectacular seafood dinner down at the Wharf!” Cynthia’s father responded: “Bob, it’s so great to see you. Dinner at the wharf sounds great!” Cynthia was crestfallen. Her daydreams of tram rides and ice cream sundaes evaporated in an instant. Plus, she hated seafood and she could just imagine how bored she would be listening to the adults talk all night. But then her father continued: “But not tonight. Cynthia and I have a special date planned, don’t we?” He winked at Cynthia and grabbed her hand and they ran out of the door and continued with what was an unforgettable night in San Francisco. As it happens, Cynthia’s father was the management thinker Stephen R. Covey (author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People) who had passed away only weeks before Cynthia told me this story. So it was with deep emotion she recalled that evening in San Francisco. His simple decision “Bonded him to me forever because I knew what mattered most to him was me!” she said.5 One simple answer is we are unclear about what is essential. When this happens we become defenceless. On the other hand, when we have strong internal clarity it is almost as if we have a force field protecting us from the non-essentials coming at us from all directions. With Rosa it was her deep moral clarity that gave her unusual courage of conviction. With Stephen it was the clarity of his vision for the evening with his loving daughter. In virtually every instance, clarity about what is essential fuels us with the strength to say no to the non-essentials. Stephen R. Covey, one of the most respected and widely read business thinkers of his generation, was an Essentialist. Not only did he routinely teach Essentialist principles – like “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing” – to important leaders and heads of state around the world, he lived them.6 And in this moment of living them with his daughter he made a memory that literally outlasted his lifetime. Seen with some perspective, his decision seems obvious. But many in his shoes would have accepted the friend’s invitation for fear of seeming rude or ungrateful, or passing up a rare opportunity to dine with an old friend. So why is it so hard in the moment to dare to choose what is essential over what is non-essential?

Your dad told me what happened today . . . out in the woods. He told me that you tracked down the guy who’s been killing all the girls around here . . . that you put yourself in danger.” Violet couldn’t tell if he was angry or annoyed . . . or both. He ran his hand through his messy hair in an agitated gesture that indicated he was getting all worked up. “And it’s not like it was the first time you’ve done that. Trouble seems to follow you wherever you go, and you’re the only person I know who doesn’t seem to care. I don’t even want to think about what could have happened to you if I hadn’t shown up last night while Grady was . . . assaulting you.” He paused as if it really was too much to think about, and then he continued to rail at her. “You can’t even go to the mall safely. I made a promise to your parents, and you just wandered off without even telling me where you were going.” His voice was suddenly too abrasive, and it felt to Violet like he was scratching his nails across a chalkboard. She bristled against the accusation in his tone, and suddenly he wasn’t the only one who was upset. “And you didn’t speak to me for a week!” she lashed back at him. “What was that all about? I spent the entire week waiting for you to stop ignoring me. And all because I didn’t bother to check in with you? You don’t get to tell me what to do! You’re not my father, you know.” “Thanks for clarifying that, Violet,” he said sardonically. “It would be creepy if you got your boyfriend and your father confused.” Violet practically jumped when he said the word boyfriend. Obviously she’d noticed that they’d gone beyond just friendship, but she hadn’t been entirely sure what that meant for them. Apparently Jay had it all figured out.

Will:"You know, when two people narrowly escape falling to their deaths, they usually have something to talk about, Even if they hadn't met before that moment, they usually have something to sayto each other afterward. But you haven't said anything to me. I've been tryingto give you some time. I've been trying to give you some space. All I want is-" Ivy:"Thank you. Thank you for risking your life. Thank you for saving me." "That's not what I wanted! Gratitude is the last thing I-" "Well, let me tell you what I want, Honesty." "When haven't I been honest? When?" "I found your note, Will. I know you blackmailed Gregory. I didn't tell the police yet, but I will." "So tell them, go ahead! It's old news to them, but if you've got the note, it's one more piece for the police files. I just don't get- Wait a minute. Do you think- You couldn't really think I did that to make money, could you?" "That's usually why people blackmail." "You think I'd betray you like that? Ivy I set up that blackmail--I got the Celentanos to help me out, and i videotaped it-so that i had something to take to the police." "Back in August when you were in the hospital, Gregory called me and told me you had tried to commit suicide. I couldn't believe it. I knew how much you missed Tristan, but I knew you were a fighter, too. I went to the train station that morning to look around and try to figure out what had gone through your head. As i was leaving I found the jacket and hat. I picked them up, but for weeks I didn't know how or even if they were connected to what had happened." "When school started I ran across some file photos of Tristan in the newspaper office. Suddenly I figured it out. I knew it wasn't like you to jump in front of a train, but it was just like you Eric and Gregory to con you across the track. I remembered how Eric had played chicken with us, and I blamed him at first. Later I realized that there was a lot more than a game going on." "Why didn't you tell me this before? You should have told me this before." "You weren't telling me things, either." "I was trying to protect you!" "What the heck do you think I was doing?...I had to distract him, give him another target, and try to get something on him at the same time. It almost worked. I gave the tape to Lieutenant Donnelly Tuesday afternoon, but Gregory had already laid his trap." "You thought I'd betray you." "Will I'm sorry. I was wrong. I really am sorry, I made a mistake. A big one. Try to understand. I was so mixed up and afraid. I thought I betrayed myself when I trusted you-and betrayed Tristan when I fell in love with you. Will!" "You fell in love with me?" "Love you, Will." "Love you, Ivy.

I jumped up, my hands in the air. “Yes!” Lend laughed. “Okay, looks like I need to make a run to the grocery store. Do faeries hate wheat or white bread more, you think?” “Get bread with raisins,” I said. “Everyone hates raisins.” Jack was bouncing, obviously excited. “That’s all we need, right?” “We need Reth.” “No,” Lend and Jack whined in unison. “Come on, you two. Reth knows the Faerie Realms better than you do. Jack, you didn’t see where the people were; it might take you a while to find them, and that’s time we can’t afford to lose. And Reth’s getting worse; being there might give him more time.” Lend scowled, grabbing the car keys off the counter. “Fine. But I’m really getting tired of his stupid smirk and prissy clothes.” Jack nodded. “And his voice that sounds like it’d even taste good. Really, it’s overkill. Best to have only a few absolutely perfect traits—for example, my hair and eyes and sparkling personality—so you don’t overwhelm them.” “Aww, are you guys jealous of how pretty Reth is? That’s kind of adorable.” “You know I could look exactly like him,” Lend said, frowning darkly. “Please for the love of all that is good and holy, never, ever wear Reth. That’s the stuff of nightmares.” That brightened his face a bit and he left me with a lingering kiss and a promise to be back with every loaf of bread we could carry. “Well, go find your stupid faerie boyfriend,” Jack said, lying down on top of the counter and drumming his fingers on his stomach. “I haven’t filled my quota for pissing off the Dark Court yet this week.” “We are going to blow your quote sky high.” He held up a hand and I high-fived him as I walked past and out of the house toward the trail. Yet again. I should have invested in a dirt bike or something given the amount of mileage I was getting out of the path between the house and the pond.

But he was ecstatic, because the prospect of those endless years of hard labor did not seem like a burden to him. Bill Gates had that same feeling when he first sat down at the keyboard at Lakeside. And the Beatles didn't recoil in horror when they were told they had to play eight hours a night, seven days a week. They jumped at the chance. Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig.

We only have a little bit of time before I leave for Korea. Let’s not waste it.” Then I slide my hand in his, and he squeezes it. The house is completely empty, for the first time all week. All the other girls are still at the party, except for Chris, who ran into somebody she knows through Applebee’s. We go up to my room, and Peter takes off his shoes and gets in my bed. “Want to watch a movie?” he asks, stretching his arms behind his head. No, I don’t want to watch a movie. Suddenly my heart is racing, because I know what I want to do. I’m ready. I sit down on the bed next to him as he says, “Or we could start a new show--” I press my lips to his neck, and I can feel his pulse jump. “What if we don’t watch a movie or a show? What if we…do something else instead.” I give him a meaningful look. His body jerks in surprise. “What, you mean like now?” “Yes.” Now. Now feels right. I start planting little kisses down his throat. “Do you like that?” I can feel him swallow. “Yes.” He pushes me away from him so he can look at my face. “Let’s stop for a second. I can’t think. Are you drunk? What did Chris put in that drink she gave you?” “No, I’m not drunk!” I had a little bit of a warm feeling in my body, but the walk home woke me right up. Peter’s still staring at me. “I’m not drunk. I swear.” Peter swallows hard, his eyes searching mine. “Are you sure you want to do this now?” “Yes,” I say, because I really, truly am. “But first can you put on Frank Ocean?” He grabs his phone, and a second later the beat kicks in and Frank’s melodious voice fills the room. Peter starts fumbling with his shirt buttons and then gives up and starts to pull my shirt up, and I yelp, “Wait!” Peter’s so startled, he jumps away from me. “What? What’s wrong?” I leap off the bed and start rummaging through my suitcase. I’m not wearing my special bra and underwear set; I’m wearing my normal every day cappuccino-colored bra with the frayed edges. I can’t lose my virginity in my ugliest bra.

Contractions. Kane’s stomach dropped right out of his body. He stared down at her, his mind going fuzzy. That was one of those words like menstruation, period, or female products . The list just wasn’t uttered in male company. Contractions fit right in there. God. This was not happening. He forced his brain under control, ignoring the pounding in his head and the roaring in his ears. He studied Rose’s body carefully. She wasn’t due for another four or five weeks, right? He knew when she got pregnant. When he’d first seen her, she had looked slim, but that had been an illusion. On the other hand, she never looked as— big —as she did at that moment.“What?” Rose demanded, glaring up at him. The warning signal flashed bright red in Kane’s head. Telling a woman she was as big as a beach ball wouldn’t win any points. How did one describe how she looked? A basketball? Volleyball? He studied her furious little face. Yeah. He was in trouble no matter what he said. Description was out of the question. He needed diplomacy, something that flew out the window when he was near her and she said words like contractions.He’d jump out of a plane without hesitation in the heart of enemy territory, but damn it all, ask him to kill someone, not deliver babies. She didn’t take her eyes off him, and that expression on her scowling face demanded an answer.

Chicago is in the Midwest, and yes, we’re probably way nicer than New Yorkers, but don’t get it twisted—we are still not making eye contact and saying hi to you while you measure out your buckwheat groats in the bulk section of the health food store. Lots of people are theoretically nice, but when you need them to jump your car’s dead battery they act like the text didn’t go through. And that’s fine. We big-city folk understand that “Call me if you need help moving next week” loosely translates to “BITCH, I DARE YOU.” But I might need a hand getting my firewood into the house, and it would be amazing to shout over the fence for Bill and his unironic cargo shorts to come over and give me one.

In a few weeks her partner will find the box containing the crib in the storeroom, the one she kept nagging at him to put together, and he'll sob so hard that it feels like his ribs will break. For the rest of their lives they will always walk past the display windows of the sports shop and think that there's one bicycle too many in there. A pair of skates too many. A hundred thousand adventures and trees to climb and puddles to jump in too many. A million uneaten ice creams. They will never be woken too early on holiday mornings, never whisper-shout "Quiet!" when they're talking on the phone, never put small gloves on the radiator. The greatest fear, the tiniest human being, will never be theirs.

Though I thought Red (Auerbach) wasn't mean enough to (Tommy) Heinsohn it seemed he was too mean to Satch (Sanders) and (Don) Nelson. He'd yell at them for no reason at all, as a pair, and he was cruel. He used to embarrass the whole team as he jumped up and down and yell at them as though they were referees. This offended my sense of justice, and so when of my first reforms when I succeeded Red as coach was to being giving Satch and Nelson the respect they deserved. That season, unfortunately, Satch and Nelson played like ghosts at first. ... It wasn't that they were goofing up, but neither of them seemed to be there, and I couldn't put my finger on exactly what they were doing wrong, but finally I'd boil over and yell at them. Then, of course, they'd play better. For weeks I tried yelling at them only when they were guilty of something, but I didn't work. Then I tried yelling at them when they were clearly innocent; some players, like Heinsohn, could become productively engaged when wrongly accused. But that didn't help either. Then it dawned on me that it didn't matter so much why I yelled at Satch and Nelson; I just had to do it regularly, at certain intervals, the way you take vitamin pills. After only a few months as player -coach I found myself thinking, "Okay, it's 7:20. Time to yell at Satch and Nelson." Needless to say, Red became less of an ogre to me and I became more of one to the players.

After you were born, someone turned on a tap. At first it was only a drip, a black drip, and I felt it as sadness. I had felt sad before . . . who hasn’t? I knew what it was like. But I didn’t know that it would come like that, for no reason. I lived with it for weeks.’ ‘Was there a drain?’ ‘No. There was no drain. There isn’t one even now.’ She was quiet for a bit. ‘It’s like oil. Like molasses, slow at first. Then one morning I woke up and it was flowing free and fast. I thought I would drown in it. I thought it would drown little you, and Susan. So I got up and got dressed and went out onto the road and tried to jump in front of a bus. I thought it would be a final thing, quick, like a bang. Only, it wasn’t.

From the President’s speech, delivered at 9 PM, EST, not seen in many areas. ‘ … a great nation such as this must do. We cannot afford to jump at shadows like small children in a dark room; but neither can we afford to take this serious outbreak of influenza lightly. My fellow Americans, I urge you to stay at home. If you feel ill, stay in bed, take aspirin, and drink plenty of clear liquids. Be confident that you will feel better in a week at most. Let me repeat what I said at the beginning of my talk to you this evening: There is no truth – no truth – to the rumor that this strain of flu is fatal. In the greatest majority of cases, the person afflicted can expect to be up and around and feeling fine within a week. Further –’ [a spasm of coughing]

Do you have a piece of paper I could write on?” I jump up too fast. “Sure. Just one? Do you—of course you need something to write with. Sorry. Here.” I grab him a paper from my deskdrawer and one of my myriad pencils, and he uses the first Children of Hypnos book as a flat surface to write on. When I’m sure he’s writing something for me to read right now, I say, “I thought you only needed to do that when other people were around?” He etches one careful line after the next. He frowns, shakes his head. “Sometimes it’s . . . tough to say things. Certain things.” His voice is hardly a whisper. I sit down beside him again, but his big hand blocks my view of the words. He stops writing, leaves the paper there, and stares. Then he hands it to me and looks the other direction. Can I kiss you? “Um,” is a delightfully complex word. “Um” means “I want to say something but don’t know what it is,” and also “You have caught me off guard,” and also “Am I dreaming right now? Someone please slap me.” I say “um,” then. Wallace’s entire head-neck region is already flushed with color, but the “um” darkens it a few shades, and goddammit, he was nervous about asking me and I made it worse. What good is “um” when I should say “YES PLEASE NOW”? Except there’s no way I’m going to say “YES PLEASE NOW” because I feel like my body is one big wired time bomb of organs and if Wallace so much as brushes my hand, I’m going to jump out of my own skin and run screaming from the house. I’ll like it too much. Out of control. No good. I say, “Can I borrow that pencil?” He hands me the pencil, again without looking. Yes, but not right now. I know it sounds weird. Sorry. I don’t think it’ll go well if I know it’s coming. I will definitely freak out and punch you in the face or scream bloody murder or something like that. Surprising me with it would probably work better. I am giving you permission to surprise me with a kiss. This is a formal invitation for surprise kisses. I don’t like writing the word “kiss.” It makes my skin crawl. Sorry. It’s weird. I’m weird. Sorry. I hope that doesn’t make you regret asking. I hand the paper and pencil back. He reads it over, then writes: No regret. I can do surprises. That’s it. That’s it? Shit. Now he’s going to try to surprise me with a kiss. At some point. Later today? Tomorrow? A week from now? What if he never does it and I spend the rest of the time we hang out wondering if he will? What have I done? This was a terrible idea. I’m going to vomit. “Be right back,” I say, and run to the bathroom to curl up on the floor. Just for like five minutes. Then I go back to my room and sit down beside Wallace. As I’m moving myself into position, his hand falls over mine, and I don’t actually jump out of my skin. My control shakes for a moment, but I turn in to it, and everything smooths out. I flip my hand over. He flexes his fingers so I can fit mine in the spaces between. And we sit there, shoulder to shoulder, with our hands resting on the bed between us. It’s not so bad

He had panicked. Tessier cursed his own stupidity. He should have remained in the column where he would have been protected. Instead, he saw an enemy coming for him like a revenant rising from a dark tomb, and had run first instead of thinking. Except this was no longer a French stronghold. The forts had all been captured and surrendered and the glorious revolutionary soldiers had been defeated. If the supply ships had made it through the blockade, Vaubois might still have been able to defend the city, but with no food, limited ammunition and disease rampant, defeat was inevitable. Tessier remembered the gut-wrenching escape from Fort Dominance where villagers spat at him and threw rocks. One man had brought out a pistol and the ball had slapped the air as it passed his face. Another man had chased him with an ancient boar spear and Tessier, exhausted from the fight, had jumped into the water. He had nearly drowned in that cold grey sea, only just managing to cling to a rock whilst the enemy searched the shoreline. The British warship was anchored outside the village, and although Tessier could see men on-board, no one had spotted him. Hours passed by. Then, when he considered it was clear, he swam ashore to hide in the malodorous marshland outside Mġarr. His body shivered violently and his skin was blue and wrinkled like withered fruit, but in the night-dark light he lived. He had crept to a fishing boat, donned a salt-stained boat cloak and rowed out to Malta's monochrome coastline. He had somehow managed to escape capture by abandoning the boat to swim into the harbour. From there it had been easy to climb the city walls and to safety. He had written his account of the marines ambush, the fort’s surrender and his opinion of Chasse, to Vaubois. Tessier wanted Gamble cashiered and Vaubois promised to take his complaint to the senior British officer when he was in a position to. Weeks went past. Months. A burning hunger for revenge changed to a desire for provisions. And until today, Tessier reflected that he would never see Gamble again. Sunlight twinkled on the water, dazzling like a million diamonds scattered across its surface. Tessier loaded his pistol in the shadows where the air was still and cool. He had two of them, a knife and a sword, and, although starving and crippled with stomach cramps, he would fight as he had always done so: with everything he had.

But then they hand you your beautiful baby, and the baby gazes up at you and says hello, and your heart just melts.” “It talks?” Sophie asked, then remembered Alden telling her months earlier that elvin babies spoke from birth. It sounded even stranger now that she could picture it. “Your speaking caused quite the uproar,” Mr. Forkle told her. “Though luckily no one could understand the Enlightened Language, so they thought you were babbling. I spent the majority of your infancy inventing excuses for the elvin things you did.” “Okay,” Sophie said, wishing he’d stop with the weird-info overload. “But what I mean is . . . I’ve been counting my age from my birthday.” Mr. Forkle didn’t look surprised. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked. “How could I? Humans built everything around their birthdays. As long as you were living with them I had to let you do the same. And since you’ve been in the Lost Cities, we’ve had so little contact. I assumed someone would notice, since your proper ID is on your Foxfire record—and in the registry. But I don’t think anyone realized you were counting differently.” “Alden wouldn’t have thought to check,” Della agreed. “Neither of us knew humans didn’t count inception.” “So wait,” Biana jumped in, “does that mean that by our rules Sophie is—” “Thirty-nine weeks older than she’s been saying,” Mr. Forkle finished for her. Fitz cocked his head as he stared at Sophie, like everything had turned sideways. “So then you’re not thirteen . . .” “Not according to the way we count,” Mr. Forkle agreed. “Going by Sophie’s ID, she’s fourteen and a little more than five months old.” Keefe laughed. “Only Foster would find a way to age nine months in a day. Also, welcome to the cool fourteen-year-olds club!” He held out his hand for a high five.

Let’s not end on African baby rape (or start with it, for that matter). Let’s end by pointing out all the positive ways you can scare yourself and feel alive. You can tell someone you love them first. You can try to speak only the truth for a whole week. You can jump out of an airplane or spend Christmas Day all by your lonesome. You can help people who need help and fight real bad guys. You can dance fast or take an improv class or do one of those Ironman things. Adventure and danger can be good for your heart and soul. Violence and desperation are brutal things to search out. Why search out the horror? It’s around us in real ways every day. I’m talking to you, the people who made that movie The Human Centipede. No more Human Centipede movies please. No more movies about people’s mouths being sewn onto people’s butts. The whole idea of making and watching a movie like that makes me want to take a ten-year nap.

I was walking home alone late one night, when out of nowhere, this rabid homosexual jumped me and bit me right on the ass. I tried to fight him off, but you know those homos have superhuman strength. Anyway, he bit me on my left cheek, then took off. The whole thing shook me up, but I thought I was gonna be okay. It took me a few weeks to notice the changes. At first the signs were subtle: the sudden urge to redecorate my room, the uncontrollable desire to do Megan's hair. Then, as the phases of the moon progressed, I noticed other things: the need to wear lace panties, the insane hope of one day owning my own flower shop. Before I knew it, I was jacking off six times a day to pictures of Brad Pitt and Russell Crowe. Of course, I won't be a full fledged gay boy until I bite someone else and pass on the 'dark gift. Hey, Rooster, you wanna be my first convert? If I turn just four people, I win like a toaster oven or something..

Your mother told you," he states flatly. "Yeah," I snap. "She told me." "She doesn't know everything. She doesn't know me...or how I feel. I would never force you to do anything against your will, and I would never, ever let anyone harm you." His words enrage me. Lies, I'm convinced. My hand shoots out, ready to slap that earnest look off his face. The same earnest look he'd given me the first time he lid to my face. He catches my hand, squeezes the wrist tight. "Jacinda-" "I don't believe you. You gave me your word. Five weeks-" "Five weeks was too long. I couldn't leave you for that long without checking on you." "Because you're a liar," I assert. His expression cracks. Emotion bleeds through. He knows I'm not talking about just the five weeks. With a shake of his head, he sounds almost sorry as he admits, "Maybe I didn't tell you everything, but it doesn't change anything I said. I will never hurt you. I want to try to protect you." "Try," I repeat. His jaw clenches. "I can. I can stop them." After several moments, I twist my hand free. He lets me go. Rubbing my wrist, I glare at him. "I have a life here now." My fingers stretch, curl into talons at my sides, still hungry to fight him. "Make me go, and I'll never forgive you." He inhales deeply, his broad chest lifting high. "Well. I can't have that." "Then you'll go? Leave me alone?" Hope stirs. He shakes his head. "I didn't say that." "Of course not," I sneer. "What do you mean then?" Panic washes over me at the thought of him staying here and learning about Will and his family. "There's no reason for you to stay." His dark eyes glint. "There's you. I can give you more time. You can't seriously fit in here. You'll come around." "I won't!" His voice cracks like thunder on the air. "I won't leave you! Do you know how unbearable it's been without you? You're not like the rest of them." His hand swipes through air almost savagely. I stare at him, eyes wide and aching. "You're not some well-trained puppy content to go alone with what you're told. You have fire." He laughs brokenly. "I don't mean literally, although there is that. There's something in you, Jacinda. You're the only thing real for me there, the only thing remotely interesting." He stares at me starkly and I don't breathe. He looks ready to reach out and fold me into his arms. I jump hastily back. Unbelievably, he looks hurt. Dropping his immense hands, he speaks again, evenly, calmly. "I'll give you more space. Time for you to realize that this"-he motions to the living room-"isn't for you. You need mists and mountains and sky. Flight. How can you stay here where you have none of that? How can you hope to survive? If you haven't figured that out yet, you will." In my mind, I see Will. Think how he has become the mist, the sky, everything, to me. I do more than survive here. I love. But Cassian can never know that. “What I have here beats what waits for me back home. The wing clipping you so conveniently failed to mention-" "Is not going to happen, Jacinda." He steps closer. His head dips to look into my eyes. "You have my word. If you return with me, you won't be harmed. I'd die first." His words flow through me like a chill wind. "But your father-" "My father won't be our alpha forever. Someday, I'll lead. Everyone knows it. The pride will listen to me. I promise you'll be safe.

Tell me what you and my dad were talking about." Jay jerked away from her as if she'd just slapped him. And Violet realized that she might as well have. He sat up quickly, as if his mind had suddenly cleared from the sensuous haze, and abruptly the teasing grin was wiped clean from his face. "Never mind," she blurted, trying to backpedal. "Forget I said anything." She wanted to go back to where they just were. But it was too late. The determined set of his jaw told her that. "No," he said harshly. "I think we should talk about this, Violet." Even the way he said her name was suddenly hard and angry. "Your dad told me what happened today...out in the woods. He told me that you tracked down the guy who's been killing all the girls around here...that you put yourself in danger." Violet couldn't tell if he was angry or annoyed...or both. He ran his hand through his messy hair in an agitated gesture that indicated he was getting all worked up. "And it's not like it was the first time you've done that. Trouble seems to follow you wherever you go, and you're the only person I know who doesn't seem to care. I don't even want to think about what could have happened to you if I hadn't shown up last night while Grady was...assaulting you." He paused as if it really was too much to think about, and then he continued to rail at her. "You can't even go to the mall safely. I made a promise to your parents, and you just wandered off without even telling me where you were going." His voice was suddenly too abrasive, and it felt to Violet like he was scratching his nails across a chalkboard. She bristled against the accusation in his tone, and suddenly he wasn't the only one who was upset. "And you didn't speak to me for a week!" she lashed back at him. "What was that all about? I spent the entire week waiting for you to stop ignoring me. And all because I didn't bother to check in with you? You don't get to tell me what to do! You're not my father, you know." "Thanks for clarifying that, Violet," he said sardonically. "It would be creepy if you got your boyfriend and your father confused." Violet practically jumped when he said the word boyfriend. Obviously she'd noticed that they'd gone beyond just friendship, but she hadn't been entirely sure what that meant for them. Apparently Jay had it all figured out. But that didn't mean he could push her around.

Fast-forward about twenty years: I was in Bora Bora on vacation. I was scuba diving, and thirty or so lemon sharks started hovering around me in the water. My first thought was, Wow, this is a lot more terrifying up close and personal than it is on Discovery Channel Shark Week. My next thought was, What do I do? I know the name lemon shark sounds sweet, but look it up. They are the ugliest, most terrifying sharks, and they get up to about ten feet long. That’s big enough to take off your head in a single bite. I hadn’t signed up for a shark encounter. In fact, they didn’t tell us much about what to expect down there, and there was no training session. It was more like, “Are you certified? Okay, just jump in.” After several minutes of being stalked by this pack of predators, I was overcome by a calmness. I remember feeling the sharks brush past my head and knock into my back. I couldn’t keep my eye on all of them--they were everywhere--so I just let it be. They didn’t bother me, and I didn’t bother them. Instead, the thing that freaked me out on the dive was a harmless little suckerfish that decided to hang out in my face. Every time I turned around, he was there, stalking me.

With one final flip the quarter flew high into the air and came down on the mattress with a light bounce. It jumped several inches off the bed, high enough for the instructor to catch it in his hand. Swinging around to face me, the instructor looked me in the eye and nodded. He never said a word. Making my bed correctly was not going to be an opportunity for praise. It was expected of me. It was my first task of the day, and doing it right was important. It demonstrated my discipline. It showed my attention to detail, and at the end of the day it would be a reminder that I had done something well, something to be proud of, no matter how small the task. Throughout my life in the Navy, making my bed was the one constant that I could count on every day. As a young SEAL ensign aboard the USS Grayback, a special operation submarine, I was berthed in sick bay, where the beds were stacked four high. The salty old doctor who ran sick bay insisted that I make my rack every morning. He often remarked that if the beds were not made and the room was not clean, how could the sailors expect the best medical care? As I later found out, this sentiment of cleanliness and order applied to every aspect of military life. Thirty years later, the Twin Towers came down in New York City. The Pentagon was struck, and brave Americans died in an airplane over Pennsylvania. At the time of the attacks, I was recuperating in my home from a serious parachute accident. A hospital bed had been wheeled into my government quarters, and I spent most of the day lying on my back, trying to recover. I wanted out of that bed more than anything else. Like every SEAL I longed to be with my fellow warriors in the fight. When I was finally well enough to lift myself unaided from the bed, the first thing I did was pull the sheets up tight, adjust the pillow, and make sure the hospital bed looked presentable to all those who entered my home. It was my way of showing that I had conquered the injury and was moving forward with my life. Within four weeks of 9/11, I was transferred to the White House, where I spent the next two years in the newly formed Office of Combatting Terrorism. By October 2003, I was in Iraq at our makeshift headquarters on the Baghdad airfield. For the first few months we slept on Army cots. Nevertheless, I would wake every morning, roll up my sleeping bag, place the pillow at the head of the cot, and get ready for the day.

Hey, I got an idea, let’s go to the movies. I wanna go to the movies, I want to take you all to the movies. Let’s go and experience the art of the cinema. Let’s begin with the Scream Of Fear, and we're gonna have it haunt us for the rest of our lives. And then let’s go see The Great Escape, and spend our summer jumping our bikes, just like Steve McQueen over barb wire. And then let’s catch The Seven Samurai for some reason on PBS, and we’ll feel like we speak Japanese because we can read the subtitles and hear the language at the same time. And then let’s lose sleep the night before we see 2001: A Space Odyssey because we have this idea that it’s going to change forever the way we look at films. And then let’s go see it four times in one year. And let’s see Woodstock three times in one year and let’s see Taxi Driver twice in one week. And let’s see Close Encounters of the Third Kind just so we can freeze there in mid-popcorn. And when the kids are old enough, let’s sit them together on the sofa and screen City Lights and Stage Coach and The Best Years of Our Lives and On The Waterfront and Midnight Cowboy and Five Easy Pieces and The Last Picture Show and Raging Bull and Schindler’s List… so that they can understand how the human condition can be captured by this amalgam of light and sound and literature we call the cinema.

He clipped the male again, this time in the shoulder, sending Einar flying backward. He was vaguely aware of Cyn racing to Leilani. He could hear her calling out his own name, but he tuned everything out, including her. Con couldn’t go to her yet. The threat needed to be eliminated. A red haze had descended across his vision as he body-slammed Einar, who was attempting to stand. That male wasn’t walking out of here. He knew he wasn’t acting rational, that the threat could be put down easier than this, but he couldn’t stop the rage that had overtaken him. Einar pumped a fist against Con’s ribcage as they tumbled to the ground. He barely felt it as he slammed a left hook across the male’s jaw. Didn’t feel anything as he jabbed him in the gut, the ribs, the face. Over and over. He felt a bloodlust overtake him as he pounded at Einar’s face. This male had wanted to hurt Leilani, to take her from Con. Strong arms wrapped around Con, tackling him to the ground and rolling him off his target. “Con!” Cyn held him tight, his eyes wild as he kept him pinned down. “It’s done. You’re scaring her.” Those words snapped him out of the dark fog of savagery that had overtaken him. Leilani stood a few feet away, her eyes wide as she stared at him. Fuck, he had scared her. “I’m fine,” he rasped to his brother. Cyn paused before loosening his grip. When he did, Con stood, terrified he’d screwed things up for good. He didn’t glance at Einar, who he was certain was dead. He’d never lost control like that, had never even come close. It pierced him that Leilani had seen him kill someone, that he literally had blood on his hands in front of her now. “Leilani—” She jumped at him, throwing her arms around his neck on a sob. “You came for me.” Unable to do anything about the blood, he wrapped his arms around her and held tight. Of course he’d come for her. There was nowhere she could go that he wouldn’t follow. That realization slammed into him as if someone had actually struck him. They’d known each other less than two weeks but she’d changed his world without even trying. He would give up his role of leader for her. The thought should have terrified him, but it didn’t. He buried his face against her neck, inhaled her sweet, arilod scent. “I’m not letting you go after the moon cycle.” She sniffled, her fingers gripping his shoulders tight. “Good because I’m not going anywhere,” she said as she pulled back. Her eyes were bright with tears as she looked at him. “I would move to the mainland for you.” She blinked once in surprise before her lips pulled up into a smile. “No. This is your home— my home now.” No, he realized, she was his home, but he simply nodded and crushed his mouth to hers.

Cohen continued to struggle with his own well-being. Even though he had achieved his life’s dream of running his own firm, he was still unhappy, and he had become dependent on a psychiatrist named Ari Kiev to help him manage his moods. In addition to treating depression, Kiev’s other area of expertise was success and how to achieve it. He had worked as a psychiatrist and coach with Olympic basketball players and rowers trying to improve their performance and overcome their fear of failure. His background building athletic champions appealed to Cohen’s unrelenting need to dominate in every transaction he entered into, and he started asking Kiev to spend entire days at SAC’s offices, tending to his staff. Kiev was tall, with a bushy mustache and a portly midsection, and he would often appear silently at a trader’s side and ask him how he was feeling. Sometimes the trader would be so startled to see Kiev there he’d practically jump out of his seat. Cohen asked Kiev to give motivational speeches to his employees, to help them get over their anxieties about losing money. Basically, Kiev was there to teach them to be ruthless. Once a week, after the market closed, Cohen’s traders would gather in a conference room and Kiev would lead them through group therapy sessions focused on how to make them more comfortable with risk. Kiev had them talk about their trades and try to understand why some had gone well and others hadn’t. “Are you really motivated to make as much money as you can? This guy’s going to help you become a real killer at it,” was how one skeptical staff member remembered Kiev being pitched to them. Kiev’s work with Olympians had led him to believe that the thing that blocked most people was fear. You might have two investors with the same amount of money: One was prepared to buy 250,000 shares of a stock they liked, while the other wasn’t. Why? Kiev believed that the reluctance was a form of anxiety—and that it could be overcome with proper treatment. Kiev would ask the traders to close their eyes and visualize themselves making trades and generating profits. “Surrendering to the moment” and “speaking the truth” were some of his favorite phrases. “Why weren’t you bigger in the trades that worked? What did you do right?” he’d ask. “Being preoccupied with not losing interferes with winning,” he would say. “Trading not to lose is not a good strategy. You need to trade to win.” Many of the traders hated the group therapy sessions. Some considered Kiev a fraud. “Ari was very aggressive,” said one. “He liked money.” Patricia, Cohen’s first wife, was suspicious of Kiev’s motives and believed that he was using his sessions with Cohen to find stock tips. From Kiev’s perspective, he found the perfect client in Cohen, a patient with unlimited resources who could pay enormous fees and whose reputation as one of the best traders on Wall Street could help Kiev realize his own goal of becoming a bestselling author. Being able to say that you were the

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

Then something moved on the hall floor, just outside the bars. Her eyes swung there. Sunday Justice sat on his haunches staring at her dark eyes with his green ones. Her heart raced. Locked up alone all these weeks, and now this creature could step wizardlike between the bars. Be with her. Sunday Justice broke the stare and looked down the hall, toward the inmates' talk. Kya was terrified that he would leave her and walk to them. But he looked back at her, blinked in obligatory boredom, and squeezed easily between the bars. Inside. Kya breathed out. Whispered, "Please stay." Taking his time, he sniffed his way around the cell, researching the damp cement walls, the exposed pipes, and the sink, all the while compelled to ignore her. A small crack in the wall was the most interesting to him. She knew because he flicked his thoughts on his tail. He ended his tour next to the small bed. Then, just like that, he jumped onto her lap and circled, his large white paws finding soft purchase on her thighs. Kya sat frozen, her arms slightly raised, so as not to interfere with his maneuvering. Finally, he settled as though he had nested here every night of his life. He looked at her. Gently she touched his head, then scratched his neck. A loud purr erupted like a current. She closed her eyes at such easy acceptance. A deep pause in a lifetime of longing. Afraid to move, she sat stiff until her leg cramped, then shifted slightly to stretch her muscles. Sunday Justice, without opening his eyes, slid off her lap and curled up next to her side. She lay down fully clothed, and they both nestled in. She watched him sleep, then followed. Not falling toward a jolt, but a drifting, finally, into an empty calm. Once during the night, she opened her eyes and watched him sleeping on his back, forepaws stretched one way, hind paws the other.

The final principle is that, more often than not, originality lies on the far side of unoriginality. The Finnish American photographer Arno Minkkinen dramatizes this deep truth about the power of patience with a parable about Helsinki’s main bus station. There are two dozen platforms there, he explains, with several different bus lines departing from each one—and for the first part of its journey, each bus leaving from any given platform takes the same route through the city as all the others, making identical stops. Think of each stop as representing one year of your career, Minkkinen advises photography students. You pick an artistic direction—perhaps you start working on platinum studies of nudes—and you begin to accumulate a portfolio of work. Three years (or bus stops) later, you proudly present it to the owner of a gallery. But you’re dismayed to be told that your pictures aren’t as original as you thought, because they look like knockoffs of the work of the photographer Irving Penn; Penn’s bus, it turns out, had been on the same route as yours. Annoyed at yourself for having wasted three years following somebody else’s path, you jump off that bus, hail a taxi, and return to where you started at the bus station. This time, you board a different bus, choosing a different genre of photography in which to specialize. But a few stops later, the same thing happens: you’re informed that your new body of work seems derivative, too. Back you go to the bus station. But the pattern keeps on repeating: nothing you produce ever gets recognized as being truly your own. What’s the solution? “It’s simple,” Minkkinen says. “Stay on the bus. Stay on the fucking bus.” A little farther out on their journeys through the city, Helsinki’s bus routes diverge, plunging off to unique destinations as they head through the suburbs and into the countryside beyond. That’s where the distinctive work begins. But it begins at all only for those who can muster the patience to immerse themselves in the earlier stage—the trial-and-error phase of copying others, learning new skills, and accumulating experience.

Pixie lay in a basket by the fire where a dozen brown and white puppies wriggled around her.  She had surprised us by getting pregnant very soon after moving back in with us, and the puppies were just under four-weeks-old now. We couldn’t have been more thrilled, and Bandit couldn’t have been a better dad.  He seemed to have endless patience as they climbed all over him, these wriggling furballs of energy.  Literally everything excited them.   Sully kneeled down beside me to pet the nearest pup, one with a big brown patch over one eye and a butt that never quit shaking.   “Have you got names for them yet?”  I pointed at the one in his hand while Bandit said.  “That’s Patch” “Because of his eye, obviously,” I filled in. Hearing the name, Patch suddenly squirmed out of his hands and bolted for Bandit, but his little paws couldn’t quite get purchase on the new floor and he skidded all the way to Bandit who he bumped into, coming to a sudden stop.  Shaking his head, he looked up at Bandit with intelligent eyes, then sat, waiting for further instructions.  Sully and I shared a look.   They were too young to know their names or much more than that, but it definitely seemed that Patch had known his name and was now waiting for Bandit to begin a game or something.  I pointed at a different puppy, one with a white shape on his rump.   “That one’s Star.” Bandit said. The minute the iPad said his name, Star’s head shot up, then he too bounded over to sit beside his brother.  Sully’s mouth fell open.  “No way…. They’re too young to behave like this.” Feeling a wave of excitement, I watched as Bandit finished calling his kids.   “Panda, Ace, Champ…” As he called their names, each puppy jumped to attention, coming to sit in a neat row in front of Bandit until all twelve of them were in a line in front of him.   I snapped a look at Bandit.  “Did you know about this? Did you know they were super smart too?”  He snorted out of his nose, laughing at our shock.  Sully and I looked at each other, the same startled expression in our eyes. “But…” was all Sully could say.  I at least managed two whole words before the full ramifications of an entire household of super smart dogs could hit me. “Oh boy.

When she turned back to me, her eyes were full of tears. Then she unbuckled herself, slid across the seat, and climbed into my lap. My heart jumped at the unexpected affection. I pulled her in and tucked her head under my chin, breathing in the smell of her hair. The feel of her small, warm body in my arms was like home. There was no other word for it. She was home. It was hard to see how much he affected her. This was the second time I’d seen her crying and both times had been over him. The jealousy was almost more than I could handle. This woman was mine. She was mine, not his. Why couldn’t he have stayed away from her? Let her just get over him? But then I realized the truth. She wasn’t mine—she never was. I’m hers. And it’s not the same thing. I’d been fine being patient, because I was just waiting for her to come out of it. I hadn’t been braced for him to come back into her life. And now, faced with the reality that I might lose her altogether, I realized what I’d known for weeks. I’m in love with her. And now this guy that I couldn’t even begin to compete with might take her from me. I felt helpless. Panicked. A fight response triggered inside and it had nowhere to go, because I couldn’t do shit about this. All I could do was be me, and that wasn’t good enough. A sex thing. It will only ever be a sex thing. She raised her head and planted a soft kiss under my chin, and it almost broke my fucking heart. She was never like this with me. And as much as I loved it, it was all fueled by her feelings for someone else. He hurt her and I was here, so I got to be the one to comfort her. But it was something. At least I could do something for her beyond just scratching an itch. She was with me, holding me. Letting me hold her. I needed to enjoy the moment because I didn’t know how many more of them I’d get. I squeezed my eyes shut and forced down the lump in my throat, tried to focus on her breath on my neck, her cheek pressed to my collarbone—the vulnerability she was giving me that I only ever saw when she was sleeping curled up next to me on those nights when she let me in. I vowed to make tonight fun so she’d forget. And so I’d have something to remember when she left.

The door opened. We all froze. “Mom, this isn’t what it looks like.” Mom put her hand on her hip. “It looks like a group of boys wrestling on the floor of your bedroom while you watch. Wearing a towel.” “Okay,” I admitted, “it is what it looks like, but it’s not—” “Sexual?” She raised her eyebrows. “Mom!” Luna stuck her head under Mom’s arm and sucked in a breath. “She’s gone from a love triangle to a kinky sex pentagon.” Blake lifted his head. “Vote for Team Blake!” Mom rolled her eyes. “Boys, vacate. Now. Aurora get dressed. And everybody head downstairs. Breakfast is on. I made quiche. There’s plenty for all.” “First edible breakfast in weeks,” Luna said. Blake smacked his lips. “Yum!” Mom checked behind the door. “Ayden’s not here, is he?” I shook my head. “Then there’s no lust factor. Although, your father may not be as easy going as I am. So, gentlemen, get out.”  As she left, Mom dragged Luna away with her. Blake shook off the other boys and stood. “That’s offensive. I’m a very lustful guy.” “And a big blabbermouth.” Logan whacked the back of Blake’s head. “But remember you can’t tell—” “Ayden!” Blake shouted. “Right,” Tristan said, “or —” “No, it’s…” Wide-eyed, Blake jerked his chin toward my door. Our heads swiveled. Ayden filled the doorway, leaning against the frame, arms folded. “What can’t you tell me?” He arched one eyebrow awaiting a reply. The silence seemed ready to explode. Ayden zeroed in on Blake. “Come on, Weak Link, give it up.” Blake blurted out, “Jayden was in the shower with Aurora!”  I choked. “What!” “You idiot!” Logan thumped Blake repeatedly. “Technically, that’s true.” Jayden said. “But only once.” Ayden’s arms dropped. Along with his jaw. Tristan jumped up and shoved Jayden’s shoulder. “Shut up!” I tugged the towel tighter. “Ayden, that didn’t happen. Exactly. Guys, he already knows the Divinicus thing.” “Oh, good.” Blake was relieved. “Secrets? Not my thing.” “No kidding,” I said. “You told Blake before me?” Ayden said. “Unbelievable.” Blake raised his brows. “What’s that supposed to mean?" I held up my hand. “I didn’t tell anyone.” “Oh, my God! Why are you in a towel?” A & E Kirk (2014-05-26). Drop Dead Demons: The Divinicus Nex Chronicles: Book 2 (Divinicus Nex Chronicles series) (pp. 466-467). A&E Kirk. Kindle Edition.

After my dad started making duck calls, he’d leave town for a few days, driving all over Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Texas trying to sell them. He left me in charge of the fishing operation. I was only a teenager, but it was my responsibility to check almost eighty hoop nets three times a week. Looking back now, it was pretty dangerous work for a teenager on the river, especially since I’d never done it alone. If you fell out of the boat and into the river, chances were you might drown if something went wrong and you were alone. But I was determined to prove to my father that I could do it, so I left the house one morning and spent all day on the river. I checked every one of our hoop nets and brought a mound of fish back to Kay to take to market. I was so proud of myself for pulling it off without anyone’s help! When Dad came home a couple of days later, Mom told him about the fish I’d caught and how much money we’d made. I could see the smile on his face. But then he went outside to check his boat and noticed that a paddle was missing. Instead of saying, “Good job, son,” he yelled at me for losing a paddle! I couldn’t believe he was scolding me over a stupid oar! I’d worked from daylight to dusk and earned enough money for my family to buy a dozen paddles! Where was the gratitude? I was so mad that I jumped in the boat and headed to the nets to see if I could find the missing paddle. After checking about seventy nets, I was resigned to the fact that it was probably gone. But when I finally reached the seventy-ninth net, I saw the paddle lying in a few bushes where I’d tied up a headliner, which is a rope leading to the net. It was almost like a religious experience for me. What were the odds of my finding a lost paddle floating in a current on a washed-out river? It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. I took the paddle back to my dad, but he was still mad at me for losing it in the first place. I have never liked the line “up a creek without a paddle” because of the trouble boat paddles caused me. I swore I would never lose another one, but lo and behold, the next year, I broke the same paddle I’d lost while trying to kill a cottonmouth water moccasin that almost bit me. My dad wasn’t very compassionate even after I told him his prized paddle perhaps saved my life. I finally concluded that everyone has quirks, and apparently my dad has some sort of weird love affair with boat paddles.

Sitting with some of the other members of the Scholastic Decathlon team, quiet, studious Martha Cox heard snatches of the lunchtime poetry. Her ears instantly pricked up. "What's going on?" she asked, her eyes bright. Betty Hong closed her book and leaned close. "Taylor McKessie told me all about it," she whispered. Betty told Martha about next week's poetry-reading assembly and how Taylor was trying to help half the starting basketball team locate their muse. "That's totally fresh!" Martha cried. "Too bad I'm not in Ms Barrington's English class." Betty made a face. "You like poetry stuff? I thought you were into maths and science." "I like it all," Martha replied. "I love astronomy and hip-hop-" Betty rolled her eyes. "Not hip-hop again." "Word, girl," Martha replied. "You know I've been bustin' out kickin' rhymes for years. It helps me remember lessons, like last night's astronomy lecture." "No," Betty said. "You didn't make up a rap to that." "Just watch," Martha cried. Leaping out of her chair, she began to chant, freestyle: "At the centre of our system is the molten sun, A star that burns hot, Fahrenheit two billion and one. But the sun, he ain't alone in the heavenly sphere, He's got nine homeys in orbit, some far, some near. Old Mercury's crowding in 'bout as close as he can, Yo, Merc's a tiny planet who loves a tan.... Some kids around Martha heard her rap. They really got into it, jumping up from their tables to clap and dance. The beat was contagious. Martha started bustin' some moves herself. She kept the rap flowing, and more kids joined the party.... "Venus is next. She's a real hot planet, Shrouded by clouds, hot enough to melt granite. Earth is the third planet from the sun, Just enough light and heat to make living fun. Then comes Mars, a planet funky and red. Covered with sand, the place is pretty dead. Jupiter's huge! The largest planet of all! Saturn's big, too, but Uranus is small. So far away, the place is almost forgotten, Neptune's view of Earth is pretty rotten. And last but not least, Pluto's in a fog, Far away and named after Mickey's home dog. Yo, that's all the planets orbiting our sun, But the Milky Way galaxy is far from done!" When Martha finished her freestyle, hip-hop flow, the entire cafeteria burst into wild applause. Troy, Chad, Zeke, and Jason had been clapping and dancing, too. Now they joined in the whooping and hollering. "Whoa," said Chad. "Martha's awesome.

I woke up as the first light began to bring an orange glow to the tops of the whispering pines (and sky) above me at 5:43 but lay still to avoid waking Hope for another half-hour. She had suffered through a tough and mostly sleepless night, and I wanted to give her every second I could as the next week promised to be very stressful for her (and me), and that was if everything went according to plan. At a few minutes after six, she either sensed the growing light or my wakefulness and shifted to give me a wet kiss. We both moved down towards the slit in the bottom of my Hennessy hammock and dropped out and down onto the pine needles to explore the morning. Both of us went a ways into the woods to take care of early morning elimination, and we met back by the hammock to discuss breakfast. I shook out some Tyler kibble (a modified GORP recipe) for me and an equal amount of Hope’s kibble for her. As soon as we had scarfed down the basic snack, we picked our way down the sloping shore to the water’s edge, jumped down into the warm water (relative to the cool morning air at any rate) for a swim as the sun came up, lighting the tips of the tallest pines on the opposite shore. Hope and I were bandit camping (a term that I had learned soon after arriving in this part of the world, and enjoyed the feel of), avoiding the established campsites that ringed Follensby Clear Pond. We found our home for the last seventeen days (riding the cooling August nights from the full moon on the ninth to what would be a new moon tonight) near a sandy swimming spot. From there, we worked our way up (and inland) fifty feet back from the water to a flat spot where some long-ago hunter had built/burned a fire pit. We used the pit to cook some of our meals (despite the illegality of the closeness to the water and the fire pit cooking outside an approved campsite … they call it ‘bandit camping’ for a reason). My canoe was far enough up the shore and into the brush to be invisible even if you knew to look for it, and nobody did/would/had. After we had rung a full measure of enjoyment out of our quiet morning swim, I grabbed the stringer I had anchored to the sandy bottom the previous afternoon after fishing, pulled the two lake trout off, killed them as quickly/painlessly/neatly as I could manage, handed one to Hope, and navigated back up the hill to our campsite. I started one of the burners on my Coleman stove (not wanting to signal our position too much, as the ranger for this area liked morning paddles, and although we had something of an understanding, I didn’t want to put him in an uncomfortable position … we had, after all, been camping far too long in a spot too close to the water). Once I had gutted/buttered/spiced the fish, I put my foil-wrapped trout over the flame (flipping and moving it every minute or so, according to the sound/smell of the cooking fish); Hope ate hers raw, as is her preference. It was a perfect morning … just me and my dog, seemingly alone in the world, doing exactly what we wanted to be doing.

Outside the room they found his family standing in the Great Hall, discussing something in heated whispers as Freddy nervously paced the other end. Oliver cleared his throat, and they all jumped. “My fiancée has made it clear that she doesn’t appreciate my attempt at a joke.” “Oliver enjoys shocking people,” Maria said calmly. When he looked at her, surprised that she had noticed, she arched one eyebrow at him. “I’m sure you know that about him by now. I find it a great flaw in his character.” She seemed to consider many things as flaws in his character. Not that he could blame her. Gran glanced from Maria to him. “So the two of you didn’t meet in a brothel?” “We did,” he said, “but only because poor Freddy got lost and wandered into one by mistake. I was trying to determine what he was looking for when Maria rushed in, mad with worry over where he might have gone off to. With two such Americans lost in the wicked city, hopelessly innocent of its dangers, I felt compelled to help them. I’ve been squiring them about town the last week. Isn’t that right, sweetheart?” She cast him a sugary and thoroughly false smile. “Oh, yes, dearest. And you were a very informative guide, too.” Jarret arched one eyebrow. “Astonishing that after finding you in a brothel, Oliver, Miss Butterfield wasn’t put off of marrying you.” “I ought to have been,” Maria said. “But he swore those days were behind him when he pledged his undying love to me on bended knee.” When Gabriel and Jarret barely managed to stifle their laughter, Oliver gritted his teeth. Bended knee, indeed. She was determined to prick his pride at every opportunity. She probably felt he deserved it. He could only pray that Gran backed down from the right before he had to bring the chit around any of his friends, or Maria would have them taunting him unmercifully for the next decade. “I’m afraid, my dear,” he said tersely, “that my brothers have trouble envisioning me bending a knee to anyone.” She affected a look of wide-eyed shock. “Have they no idea what a romantic you are? I’ll have to show them the sonnets you wrote praising my beauty. I believe I left them in my redingote pocket.” The teasing wench actually looked back toward the entrance. “I could go fetch them if you like.” “Not now,” he said, torn between a powerful urge to laugh and an equally powerful urge to strangle her. “It’s time for dinner, and I’m starved.” “So am I,” Freddy put in. At a frown from Maria, he mumbled, “Not that it matters, mind you.” “Of course it matters,” Gran said graciously. “We don’t like our guests to be uncomfortable. Come along then, Mr. Dunse. You may take me in to dinner, since my grandson is otherwise occupied.” As they trooped toward the dining room, Oliver bent his head to whisper, “I see you’re enjoying making me out to be a besotted idiot.” A minxish smile tipped up her fetching lips. “Oh, yes. It’s great fun.” “Then my explanation of how you ended up in a brothel met with your approval?” “It’ll do for now.” She cast him a glance from beneath her long lashes. “You’re by no means out of the woods yet, sir.” But I will be by the time the night is over. No matter what it took, he would get her to stay and do this, so help him God.

The word “empath” jumped up in my awareness a few years after I had already been in the States. When I first came across it, it felt so woo-woo and new-agey that the “normal” part of me balked at it. It was hard enough to own being a Highly Sensitive Person, words that had research backing them. But this empath thing, this was taking it even a step further. It veered off into ambiguous, questionable territory. In fact, when I had first stumbled across the word online, trying to find a way to understand a part of my sensitivity that being an HSP didn’t quite encapsulate, I hadn’t even thought that it could possibly have anything to do with me. But the more I listened to other people’s stories, the more I followed the breadcrumbs, the more it started feeling that although the words that people used to describe their empath experiences were foreign, what they were talking about was essentially my own experience. It was just that some of these people connected that experience to belief systems I didn’t always resonate with while some others wrapped up the word in explanations that felt like the making up of a false story. But slowly, I could see that at the heart of it, beyond the cloak of words, beyond the different interpretations that people gave, our experiences felt similar. Like these so-called empaths, I often felt flooded with other people’s feelings. Their curiosity, worry and frustration jumped out at me. This often made me feel like I was walking through emotional minefields or collecting new feelings like you would collect scraps of paper. Going back to India after moving to the States, each time, I was stuck by how much all the little daily interactions, packed tightly in one day, which were part of my parents’ Delhi household, affected me energetically. Living in suburban America, I had often found the quiet too much. Then, I had thought nostalgically about India. Weeks could pass here without anyone so much as ringing the bell to our house. But it seemed like I had conveniently forgotten the other side of the story, forgotten how overstimulating Delhi had always been for me. There was, of course, the familiar sensory overload all around -- the continuous honking of horns, the laborers working noisily in the house next door, the continuous ringing of the bell as different people came and went -- the dhobi taking the clothes for ironing, the koodawalla come to pick up the daily trash, the delivery boy delivering groceries from the neighborhood kiraana store. But apart from these interruptions, inconveniences and overstimulations, there was also something more. In Delhi, every day, more lives touched mine in a day than they did in weeks in America. Going back, I could see, clearly for the first time, how much this sensory overload cost me and how much other people’s feelings leaked into mine, so much so that I almost felt them in my body. I could see that the koodawalla, the one I had always liked, the one from some kind of a “lower caste,” had changed in these past few years. He was angry now, unlike the calm resignation, almost acceptance he had carried inside him before. His anger seemed to jump out at me, as if he thought I was part of a whole tribe of people who had kept people like him down for years, who had relegated him to this lower caste, who had only given him the permission to do “dirty,” degrading work, like collecting the trash.

The word “empath” jumped up in my awareness a few years after I had already been in the States. When I first came across it, it felt so woo-woo and new-agey that the “normal” part of me balked at it. It was hard enough to own being a Highly Sensitive Person, words that had research backing them. But this empath thing, this was taking it even a step further. It veered off into ambiguous, questionable territory.  In fact, when I had first stumbled across the word online, trying to find a way to understand a part of my sensitivity that being an HSP didn’t quite encapsulate, I hadn’t even thought that it could possibly have anything to do with me. But the more I listened to other people’s stories, the more I followed the breadcrumbs, the more it started feeling that although the words that people used to describe their empath experiences were foreign, what they were talking about was essentially my own experience. It was just that some of these people connected that experience to belief systems I didn’t always resonate with while some others wrapped up the word in explanations that felt like the making up of a false story. But slowly, I could see that at the heart of it, beyond the cloak of words, beyond the different interpretations that people gave, our experiences felt similar. Like these so-called empaths, I often felt flooded with other people’s feelings. Their curiosity, worry and frustration jumped out at me. This often made me feel like I was walking through emotional minefields or collecting new feelings like you would collect scraps of paper. Going back to India after moving to the States, each time, I was stuck by how much all the little daily interactions, packed tightly in one day, which were part of my parents’ Delhi household, affected me energetically. Living in suburban America, I had often found the quiet too much. Then, I had thought nostalgically about India. Weeks could pass here without anyone so much as ringing the bell to our house. But it seemed like I had conveniently forgotten the other side of the story, forgotten how overstimulating Delhi had always been for me.  There was, of course, the familiar sensory overload all around -- the continuous honking of horns, the laborers working noisily in the house next door, the continuous ringing of the bell as different people came and went -- the dhobi taking the clothes for ironing, the koodawalla come to pick up the daily trash, the delivery boy delivering groceries from the neighborhood kiraana store. But apart from these interruptions, inconveniences and overstimulations, there was also something more. In Delhi, every day, more lives touched mine in a day than they did in weeks in America. Going back, I could see, clearly for the first time, how much this sensory overload cost me and how much other people’s feelings leaked into mine, so much so that I almost felt them in my body. I could see that the koodawalla, the one I had always liked, the one from some kind of a “lower caste,” had changed in these past few years. He was angry now, unlike the calm resignation, almost acceptance he had carried inside him before. His anger seemed to jump out at me, as if he thought I was part of a whole tribe of people who had kept people like him down for years, who had relegated him to this lower caste, who had only given him the permission to do “dirty,” degrading work, like collecting the trash.

Evening,” Zane said. It was a pretty wordy opening for him. Phoebe debated inviting him in, then decided it would be too much like an offer to sleep with him. Instead of stepping back and pointing to the bed, which was really what she wanted to do, she moved down the hallway, shutting the door behind her, and did her best to look unimpressed. “Hi, Zane. How are the preparations coming?” He gave her one of his grunts, then shrugged. She took that to mean, “Great. And thanks so much for asking.” They weren’t standing all that close, but she was intensely aware of him. Despite the fact that he’d probably been up at dawn and that it was now close to ten, he still smelled good. He wasn’t wearing his cowboy hat, so she could see his dark hair. Stubble defined his jaw. She wanted to rub her hands over the roughness, then maybe hook her leg around his hip and slide against him like the sex-starved fool she was turning out to be. “Maya’ll be here tomorrow,” he said. “Elaine Mitchell is bringing her out to the ranch with all of the greenhorns in her tourist bus.” She had to clear her throat before speaking. “Maya called me about an hour ago to let me know she’d be getting here about three.” He folded his arms across his broad chest, then leaned sideways against the doorjamb beside her. So very close. Her attention fixed on the strong column of his neck, and a certain spot just behind his jaw that she had a sudden urge to kiss. Would it be warm? Would she feel his pulse against her lips? “She doesn’t need to know what happened,” Zane said. Phoebe couldn’t quite make sense of his words, and he must have read the confusion in her eyes. They were alone, it was night and the man seemed to be looming above her in the hallway. She’d never thought she would enjoy being loomed over, but it was actually very nice. She had the feeling that if she suddenly saw a mouse or something, she could shriek and jump, and he would catch her. Of course he would think she was an idiot, but that was beside the point. “Between us,” he explained. “Outside. She doesn’t need to know about the kiss.” A flood of warmth rushed to her face as she understood that he regretted kissing her. She instinctively stepped backward, only to bump her head against the closed bedroom door. Before she had time to be embarrassed about her lack of grace or sophistication, he groaned, reached for her hips and drew her toward him. “She doesn’t need to know about this one, either.” His lips took hers with a gentle but commanding confidence. Her hands settled on either side of the strong neck she’d been eyeing only seconds ago. His skin was as warm as she’d imagined it would be. The cords of his muscles moved against her fingers as he lifted his head to a better angle. His hands were still, except his thumbs, which brushed her hip bones, slow and steady. His fingers splayed over the narrowest part of her waist and nearly met at the small of her back. She wished she could feel his fingertips against her skin, but her thin cotton top got in the way. He kept her body at a frustrating distance from his. In fact, when she tried to move closer, he held her away even as he continued the kiss. Lips on lips. Hot and yielding. She waited for him to deepen the kiss, but he didn’t. And she couldn’t summon the courage to do it herself. Finally, he drew back and rested his forehead against hers for a long moment. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Try to be a little more resistible. I don’t think I can take a week of this.” Then he turned on his heel, walked to a door at the end of the long hallway, and went inside. She stood in place, her fingers pressed against her still-tingling lips. More than a minute passed before she realized she was smiling.

Successful con men are treated with considerable respect in the South. A good slice of the settler population of that region were men who’d been given a choice between being shipped off to the New World in leg-irons and spending the rest of their lives in English prisons. The Crown saw no point in feeding them year after year, and they were far too dangerous to be turned loose on the streets of London—so, rather than overload the public hanging schedule, the King’s Minister of Gaol decided to put this scum to work on the other side of the Atlantic, in The Colonies, where cheap labor was much in demand. Most of these poor bastards wound up in what is now the Deep South because of the wretched climate. No settler with good sense and a few dollars in his pocket would venture south of Richmond. There was plenty of opportunity around Boston, New York, and Philadelphia—and by British standards the climate in places like South Carolina and Georgia was close to Hell on Earth: swamps, alligators, mosquitoes, tropical disease... all this plus a boiling sun all day long and no way to make money unless you had a land grant from the King... So the South was sparsely settled at first, and the shortage of skilled labor was a serious problem to the scattered aristocracy of would-be cotton barons who’d been granted huge tracts of good land that would make them all rich if they could only get people to work it. The slave-trade was one answer, but Africa in 1699 was not a fertile breeding ground for middle-management types... and the planters said it was damn near impossible for one white man to establish any kind of control over a boatload of black primitives. The bastards couldn’t even speak English. How could a man get the crop in, with brutes like that for help? There would have to be managers, keepers, overseers: white men who spoke the language, and had a sense of purpose in life. But where would they come from? There was no middle class in the South: only masters and slaves... and all that rich land lying fallow. The King was quick to grasp the financial implications of the problem: The crops must be planted and harvested, in order to sell them for gold—and if all those lazy bastards needed was a few thousand half-bright English-speaking lackeys in order to bring the crops in... hell, that was easy: Clean out the jails, cut back on the Crown’s grocery bill, jolt the liberals off balance by announcing a new “Progressive Amnesty” program for hardened criminals.... Wonderful. Dispatch royal messengers to spread the good word in every corner of the kingdom; and after that send out professional pollsters to record an amazing 66 percent jump in the King’s popularity... then wait a few weeks before announcing the new 10 percent sales tax on ale. That’s how the South got settled. Not the whole story, perhaps, but it goes a long way toward explaining why George Wallace is the Governor of Alabama. He has the same smile as his great-grandfather—a thrice-convicted pig thief from somewhere near Nottingham, who made a small reputation, they say, as a jailhouse lawyer, before he got shipped out. With a bit of imagination you can almost hear the cranky little bastard haranguing his fellow prisoners in London jail, urging them on to revolt: “Lissen here, you poor fools! There’s not much time! Even now—up there in the tower—they’re cookin up some kind of cruel new punishment for us! How much longer will we stand for it? And now they want to ship us across the ocean to work like slaves in a swamp with a bunch of goddamn Hottentots! “We won’t go! It’s asinine! We’ll tear this place apart before we’ll let that thieving old faggot of a king send us off to work next to Africans! “How much more of this misery can we stand, boys? I know you’re fed right up to here with it. I can see it in your eyes— pure misery! And I’m tellin’ you, we don’t have to stand for it!...

Snacks? What kind of snacks?” I asked. “Something called chips, which are made from potatoes, and different kinds of candies.” “Oh, you’re gonna sell candy, too?” “Yeah, but totally different from the candy shop.” “I see.” “I hope you’ll come by for the grand opening.” “When is it?” “Hopefully, next week. I’ll let you know.” I nodded. “Okay, I’ll try to make it, Tes.” “Cool. Thank you. Alright, I’m going to get some more food,” he said and left. A few minutes later, Maky got on the microphone and announced that the dancing portion of the night was going to start soon. “Woohoo! It’s dancing time,” said Arthur excitedly. “You know who I’m going to ask to dance with me?” “Who?” I asked. “Autumn,” answered Pierce. “Yup! Hopefully, she’ll agree.” “What about you, Pierce? Are you gonna ask anyone to dance?” “Um, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just dance by myself or with a group of friends,” the knight answered. “Cool…” I said sadly because I felt a little bit left out. “Or you know, maybe I’ll just hang out with you.” “Naw, I’m fine. You don’t have to keep me company.” Then suddenly, music started playing from the speakers that were set up at all the four corners of the city square. “Oh, here we go! I’ll be back later,” said Arthur as he took off to find Autumn. As the music played, I looked around for Maky’s band, but they were nowhere in sight. “Hm. This music must be coming from the jukebox,” I said. “Yeah, I don’t think Maky is playing tonight,” said Pierce. “She’s not? Why not? They’re super good.” “I don’t know, Steve.” “Hm. Oh, look. People are starting to take to the dance floor.” Slowly, a couple of villagers made their way toward the center of the city square. They were nervous about being the first ones, but soon after, many others followed their lead. Before I knew it, there were a ton of villagers in the middle, jumping up and down and dancing to the music. “That looks like fun…” I said. “Yeah…” said Pierce. “You should go join them.” “N-nah. I like sitting here.” Right when Pierce said that, someone came by and grabbed his hand and pulled him to the dance floor. “Come on, Pierce, let’s show them how it’s done,” said Leila. “B-but I’m not that good!” said Pierce. I tried my best to smile and said, “Have fun…” With my fake smile on, I watched as Pierce was dragged into the middle. Leila had stolen my only company away from me, and that made me feel super left out. I sighed and thought to myself, I wish I was out of this chair already. But I knew I didn’t have a choice, so I just sat in my chair and nodded along to the music. A few minutes later, the first song ended and the next one came on. I just continued sitting there while watching my friends have fun. In the middle, I could see Arthur dancing with Autumn, Cindy dancing with Arceus, and Leila dancing with Pierce. Shortly after, someone came by to talk to me. “Hey, Steve! How ya doing?” Maky asked while breathing hard. “Maky? Why aren’t you playing tonight?” I asked. “Oh, because I wanted to dance and have fun tonight. I mean, playing my instrument is fun, too, but dancing is a different kind of fun.” “I see.” “So, what are you doing over here? You don’t want to join the fun?” “Uh, there’s not much fun to be had when I’m stuck in a wheel chair.” “Oh, that’s nonsense!” Then she ran behind my chair, tilted it slightly backwards and pushed me off toward the middle of the dance floor. “Whoa! What are you doing?!” “We’re going to dance!” “Huh?!

Their affair had been three of the most intense, reckless, terrifying, happy, alive months of his life. Like how he imagined being on heroin felt if the high never ended, if every syringe didn’t also contain the possibility of death. They’d been partners at the time, and there had been one week when they’d been on the road together in northern California. Every night, they rented two rooms. Every night, for five days, he stayed with her. They barely slept that week. Couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Couldn’t stop talking when they weren’t making love, and the daylight hours when they had to pretend to be professionals made it all the more beautifully excruciating. He had never felt such a complete lack of self-consciousness around anyone. Even Theresa. Unconditional acceptance. Not just of his body and mind, but also of something more, of something indefinably him. Ethan had never connected with anyone on this level. The most generous blessing and life-destroying curse all wrapped up in the same woman, and despite the pain of the guilt and the knowledge of how it would crush his wife, whom he still loved, the idea of turning away from Kate seemed like a betrayal of his soul. So she had done it for him. On a cold and rainy night in Capitol Hill. In a booth over glasses of Belgian beer in a loud dark bar called the Stumbling Monk. He was ready to leave Theresa. To throw everything away. He had asked Kate there to tell her that and instead she had reached across the scuffed wood of a table worn smooth by ten thousand pint glasses and broken his heart. Kate wasn’t married, had no children. She wasn’t ready to jump off the cliff with him when he had so much pulling him back from the ledge. Two weeks later, she was in Boise, pursuant to her own transfer request. One year later, she was missing in a town in Idaho in the middle of nowhere called Wayward Pines, with Ethan off to find her. Eighteen hundred years later, after almost everything they had known had turned to dust or eroded out of existence, here they stood, facing each other in a toy shop in the last town on earth. For a moment, staring into her face at close range blanked Ethan’s mind. Kate spoke first. “I was wondering if you’d ever drop in.” “I was wondering that myself.” “Congratulations.” “For?” She reached over the counter and tapped his shiny brass star. “Your promotion. Nice to see a familiar face running the show. How are you adjusting to the new job?” She was good. In this short exchange, it was obvious that Kate had mastered the superficial conversational flow that the best of Wayward Pines could achieve without straining. “It’s going well,” he said. “Good to have something steady and challenging, I bet.” Kate smiled, and Ethan couldn’t help hearing the subtext, wondered if everyone did. If it ever went silent. As opposed to running half naked through town while we all try to kill you. “The job’s a good fit,” he said. “That’s great. Really happy for you. So, to what do I owe the pleasure?” “I just wanted to pop in and say hi.” “Well, that was nice of you. How’s your son?” “Ben’s great,” Ethan said.

I hear the door open and close, and I peek to see the one and only. “What do you want?” I ask, staring back up at the stars, taking a large sip of my beer. He doesn’t answer, but takes a seat next to me. I turn to see he’s also drinking a beer. He’s back in his work attire, sporting a pair of kakis and a button up polo. “What happened to your Guns-N-Roses shirt? Don’t want anyone to know your alter ego? They might find out you’re really some sort of party animal who raves to heavy metal and goes on drinking binges instead of science fairs?” I laugh taking another swig. We connect eyes and something in them tells me that I might be on to something. “No way. Tell me I’m not wrong. The science teacher secretly has a bad side.” He stands quickly sticking out his hand. “Come with me.” Huh? “No way. Why? You gonna try and retaliate? Avenge all teachers I’ve tried to take out this week?” His laugh is like a tickle to my lady parts. I fight to admit that I seriously love that sound. “No, but it would be fitting though, Peter Parker, saving the world from the reckless bad girl.” I give him my evil eye while he smiles wider. “Come with me. I promise, I’ll bring you back in one piece.” His hand taunting, I decide, what the hell. I stick my hand out, sliding it into his, the feel of his warm skin wrapped around mine. He walks me around to the front of the house and a few cars down, until he stops beside a Jeep. Unlocking the door, he says, “Jump in,” and walks around the other side. Knowing I have a pretty loud voice if he does try and kill me, I jump in. The inside smells just like him. Of spice and aftershave.

She wondered if he was a neighbor, started to smile and introduce herself when his deep voice cut through the cool morning air. “All right, what the hell is going on?” Ignoring the anger in his voice, Charity set her hammer on top of the dresser and climbed down from the porch. “Good morning. I’m Charity Sinclair. I’m the new--” “I don’t care who you are, lady, I want to know what you’re doing on this property.” She fixed a smile on her face, though it took a good bit of effort. “I’m here because I’m the owner. I bought the Lily Rose from a man named Moses Flanagan.” He narrowed those striking blue eyes at her. “Bullshit. Old man Flanagan may not live here anymore but he’d die before he’d sell the Lily Rose. I don’t know who you think you’re kidding, sweetheart, but if you’re planning to squat on his property you can forget it.” It was getting harder by the moment to hang on to her temper. “You’re wrong, Mr…?” He made no effort to answer, just continued to glare down the length of his nicely shaped nose. “Mr. Flanagan decided to move in with his son in Calgary. He listed the property for sale several weeks ago with Smith Real Estate in Dawson. I’m the person who bought it.” His features looked even harder than they had before. “That’s impossible. I tried to buy this place from Mose Flanagan every other month for the last four years. He refused to even consider it.” Her irritation inched up a notch. “Well, apparently he changed his mind. The transaction officially closed yesterday morning. I don’t know why he didn’t tell you the property was for sale.” When his black scowl deepened, she couldn’t resist adding, “Maybe he just didn’t like you.” He opened his mouth to argue, clamped down on his jaw instead, and a muscle jumped in his cheek. Apparently her goading had hit on a portion of the truth.

Mr. Flanagan decided to move in with his son in Calgary. He listed the property for sale several weeks ago with Smith Real Estate in Dawson. I’m the person who bought it.” His features looked even harder than they had before. “That’s impossible. I tried to buy this place from Mose Flanagan every other month for the last four years. He refused to even consider it.” Her irritation inched up a notch. “Well, apparently he changed his mind. The transaction officially closed yesterday morning. I don’t know why he didn’t tell you the property was for sale.” When his black scowl deepened, she couldn’t resist adding, “Maybe he just didn’t like you.” He opened his mouth to argue, clamped down on his jaw instead, and a muscle jumped in his cheek. Apparently her goading had hit on a portion of the truth. “So now you’re the owner,” he said darkly. “That’s right, I am.” He looked her over from head to foot, taking in her Liz Claiborne jeans and the touch of makeup she hadn’t been able to resist. She bristled at his smug expression. “And you actually intend to move in?” “I am in, Mr…?” “Hawkins. McCall Hawkins. I’m your next-door neighbor, so to speak. And I don’t appreciate all that hammering you’ve been doing. I like things nice and quiet. I enjoy my privacy and I don’t like being disturbed. It’ll be easier on both of us if you keep that in mind.” “I’ll do my best,” she lied, thinking of the noisy dredging equipment she intended to use in the stream. She gave him a too-sweet smile. “I’d say it was a pleasure, Mr. Hawkins, but we both know it wasn’t. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work.” Turning away from him, she climbed the stairs to the porch, picking up her hammer, and started pounding on the dresser again, dismissing him as if he had never been there. For several long moments, he simply stood there glaring. Then she caught the movement of his shadow as he turned and stalked away, back down the path beside the creek. Of all the nerve. Who the devil did he think he was?

How’d you like that valentine I sent you?” “You sent me?” said Sister. “You sent me this valentine?” “Yep,” said Billy. “I saved up for weeks to get it.” Sister was confused. She didn’t know what to say, so she just said, “Thanks.” She was still confused that evening when she showed Billy’s valentine to Mama. “Well, it certainly is beautiful,” said Mama, “and I understand your puzzlement. It takes me back to when I was a cub your age. There was this awful boy, just like Billy Grizzwold. He was just awful. The things he did! One time he chased me with a thousand-legger.” “Yuck!” said Sister. “And that wasn’t the worst of it,” continued Mama. “Once he put a giant bullfrog in my lunch box. It scared me half to death when it jumped out. It scared the whole class. It got me in a peck of trouble.” “How about that awful boy?” asked Sister. “Didn’t he get in trouble?” “Oh, yes. From time to time!” said Mama. “But after a while, he straightened out, got married, and raised a family. He became a solid citizen.” “Do I know him?” asked Sister. “Yes,” said Mama. “He’s sitting right over there. It was your papa.” Sister looked over at Papa, whose face was buried in the newspaper.

In October of 1991, on the day I met Steve, it was only by chance that I stopped at his wildlife park at all. I had been sleeping in the backseat of a car on the way back from a barbecue at a friend of a friend’s house. Up front, Lori’s friend knew I was interested in zoos. When he saw a sign for this one, he debated with himself whether he should wake me. Even when he did, I wasn’t sure if this reptile park was going to be much more than a few snakes in little glass tanks. So it was only by chance that I was on that highway at all, and only chance that I stopped. And it was only by chance that Steve conducted the croc show that day. Some days, Wes did the show. Chance. Fate. Destiny. These were words I lived by. I believed my life had been shaped for a special purpose. But with Steve’s death my faith was tested. Was it pure chance that Steve, a man who cheated mortality almost every single day of his adult life, died in such a bizarre accident? During the decade and a half that I knew him, I don’t think a week went by when he didn’t get a bite, blow, or injury of some kind. His knee and shoulder plagued him from years of jumping crocs. As Steve erected a fence at our Brigalow Belt conservation property, a big fence-post driver he was using slipped and landed directly on his head, compressing the fifth disk in his neck. Even injured, he still managed to push on--at the zoo, filming, and doing heavy construction. He went at work like a bull at a gate. He climbed trees with orangutans. He traversed the most remote deserts and the most impossible mountains. He packed his life chock-a-block full with risks of all kinds. “I get called an adrenaline junkie every other minute,” Steve said. “I’m just fine with that.” One crowded hour of glorious life is worth more than an age without a name. I had no regrets for Steve’s glorious life, and I know he couldn’t have lived any other way.

It’s midnight. I figure it will get light about six or seven, right? We can’t just run the Blazer all night.” He paused as if he didn’t quite know what to say next. He ran his hand down his face, and I suddenly felt like laughing from sheer helplessness. I bit my lip hard, the inappropriate giggle perched at the back of my throat just waiting to jump out. I really was crazy. "I have a sleeping bag and two pillows, plus those three old blankets. It’s going to get cold when we turn off the Blazer.” Finn stopped again, as if he were uncomfortable, and the giggle escaped through my clenched lips. “Are you laughing?” “No.” “You are. Here I am feeling like a dirty old man because I’m about to suggest that we make a bed and cuddle up to keep warm, and you are laughing.” “You were going to suggest we . . . cuddle?” My shock immediately cured the giggling problem. Finn ran both hands over his face, scrubbing at it like he wanted to erase what he’d just said. “Okay,” I said in a tiny voice. He looked at me in surprise, and I couldn’t help it. I smiled. A big, wide, you-are-my-sunshine smile. “You do realize we’re in trouble here, right?” Finn shook his head like he doubted my sense, but a smile teetered around the corners of his mouth. “This isn’t a slumber party with your girlfriends and trips to the fridge for snacks.” “Hey, Clyde?” “Yeah, Bonnie?” “You will have officially slept with Bonnie Rae Shelby after tonight. You aren’t going to ask me to sign an autograph, are you? Maybe sign your hiney in permanent marker so you can take a picture and sell it to US Weekly?” “Got a little ego, there, huh?” I dove over the seat into the back, laughing. “Dibs on the pillow with a pillow case!

On many a Friday night, coming home from a week-long training mission in a T-38 just like the one I was in now, Roger and I would buzz our houses just before turning sharply left, dropping the gear and landing at Ellington Air Force Base. From as far as San Antonio, we would point the needle nose of our plane directly at the driveway separating our houses and roar over Barbuda Lane, shaking the shingles and rattling the dishes at 600 knots. The noisy message let our wives (and neighbors) know that we would be home soon. We would land, jump into our cars, and race down the two-lane Old Galveston Highway, through the single stoplight in the town of Webster at eighty miles per hour and screech up to our houses in less than ten minutes. It was all somewhat illegal, but what the hell, we were astronauts!

I can see myself acquiring bad habits from living here. My little house is equipped with a TV, and I've watched a lot this week. At home I seldom switch on before 'The Nine O'Clock News', and usually it's later than that, for an arts documentary or a film. This week I've been watching TV while eating my solitary dinner, and leaving it on afterwards because when I switched it off the silence seemed so deathly, and I can't stand listening to music on my tinny transistor radio. I've seen all kinds of programmes I never normally watch, soaps and sitcoms and police series, consuming them steadily and indiscriminately like a child eating its way through a bag of mixed sweets. For simple mindless distraction you can't beat early evening television. No scene lasts more than thirty seconds, and the stories jump from character so fast that you hardly notice how cardboard-thin they are.

am full beyond words. And as is usual with me, I wept just a little. It’s silly weak, kiddish and all that, but, gee, to have done something real … One can if one will. Now I know it. We measure by material accomplishments, that is, in the eyes of society.… I think I am registering a comeback, to employ the vernacular. Now to burst into print and to begin—not to shine—but to show phosphorescent tendencies that may assemble into a little glow. Big fires from little sparks grow. You’re with me, dad’s with me; and there are many I rather feel will jump on top when my bus gets going. I have youth; I am acquiring faith, i.e. courage, confidence, right’s might: I am learning every day and developing every hour.… Fool that I am, I’d like to cry for a week, just from sheer happiness.… This year I am sure is the most glorious in my college so far after all.—If only I could find a girl, now. That is a big problem for me to thrash out—and it must be for myself, by myself, and with no other source or guide, less perchance it be Experience. I have so long avoided and put off telling this to you: but you must see it. After Emma, I have lost faith in your sex. That affair you never knew in detail. I can tell you of it some day, but not here and now.… Why I write this, I cannot say. I don’t know. But as I see engagements about me by the score—not that I think it even tolerable in one so young—but because I realize that I of equal age (in years) do not feel the slightest attraction or inclination to … (page missing)

Wouldn’t you like to be the skater who wins the silver, and yet is thrilled about those three triple jumps that the gold medal winner did? To love it the way you love a sunrise? Just to love the fact that it was done? For it not to matter whether it was their success or your success. Not to care if they did it or you did it. You are as happy that they did it as if you had done it yourself—because you are just so happy to see

Here are a few notable things that can spark inflammation and depress the function of your liver: Alcohol overload—This is relatively well-known. Your liver is largely responsible for metabolizing alcohol, and drinking too much liquid courage can send your liver running to cry in a corner somewhere. Carbohydrate bombardment—Starches and sugar have the fastest ability to drive up blood glucose, liver glycogen, and liver fat storage (compared to their protein and fat macronutrient counterparts). Bringing in too many carbs, too often, can elicit a wildfire of fat accumulation. In fact, one of the most effective treatments for reversing NAFLD is reducing the intake of carbohydrates. A recent study conducted at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and published in the journal Cell Metabolism had overweight test subjects with high levels of liver fat reduce their ratio of carbohydrate intake (without reducing calories!). After a short two-week study period the subjects showed “rapid and dramatic” reductions of liver fat and other cardiometabolic risk factors. Too many medications—Your liver is the top doc in charge of your body’s drug metabolism. When you hear about drug side effects on commercials, they are really a direct effect of how your liver is able to handle them. The goal is to work on your lifestyle factors so that you can be on as few medications as possible along with the help of your physician. Your liver will do its best to support you either way, but it will definitely feel happier without the additional burden. Too many supplements—There are several wonderful supplements that can be helpful for your health, but becoming an overzealous natural pill-popper might not be good for you either. In a program funded by the National Institutes of Health, it was found that liver injuries linked to supplement use jumped from 7 percent to 20 percent of all medication/supplement-induced injuries in just a ten-year time span. Again, this is not to say that the right supplements can’t be great for you. This merely points to the fact that your liver is also responsible for metabolism of all of the supplements you take as well. And popping a couple dozen different supplements each day can be a lot for your liver to handle. Plus, the supplement industry is largely unregulated, and the additives, fillers, and other questionable ingredients could add to the burden. Do your homework on where you get your supplements from, avoid taking too many, and focus on food first to meet your nutritional needs. Toxicants—According to researchers at the University of Louisville, more than 300 environmental chemicals, mostly pesticides, have been linked to fatty liver disease. Your liver is largely responsible for handling the weight of the toxicants (most of them newly invented) that we’re exposed to in our world today. Pesticides are inherently meant to be deadly, but just to small organisms (like pests), though it seems to be missed that you are actually made of small organisms, too (bacteria

If the average American were to jump right into week long retreat in a Zen monastery, it would certainly feel like an excruciatingly painful practice of extreme asceticism—but so would trying to run a full marathon on the first day one decides to take up jogging. It may be the case that many Zen monasteries tilt too far in the direction of asceticism, even more than is necessary as a corrective to our more hedonistic lifestyle. But it is no doubt true that many of our lifestyles tilt too far in the direction of indulging various desires, an indulgence that multiplies and distorts our natural desires into unnatural cravings.

18. Consistency, consistency, consistency! Running well takes months and years of diligent work. Unfortunately, there’s no short-term fix or “get fast quick” plan out there. Distance running is a long-term sport and it takes the top athletes years - sometimes decades - to reach their genetic potential. Remember that what you run today impacts what you’re able to do next week, which impacts what you can do next month, etc. Consistency is king and you’ll often get better results by adding a little bit of running for a few months than trying to jump up your mileage over just a few weeks. Small changes, made over a long period of time, will ultimately help you be a better runner. 19. Don’t blindly follow the 10% Rule. The 10% Rule states that you should only increase your mileage by 10% or less per week. But this “rule” is too simplistic for most runners and you should modify it for your own situation. Listen to your body because sometimes 10% will be aggressive, while other times you’ll be ready for more. Figure out your “mileage baseline” - the number of weekly miles you’re comfortable at. You can aggressively increase your mileage to this baseline but then you should be more conservative once you’re at or above your baseline. It’s also a good idea to hold your mileage at the same level for 2-3 weeks before increasing it to ensure your body is fully adapted to the higher workload. 20. Don’t burn the candle from both ends. This is a rule I learned the hard way in college. If you’re partying too much, eating like crap, or not sleeping enough then you can’t train at your normal level. You’ll need to cut back on your training to allow your body to recover from your non-running extracurricular activities. When you’re sacrificing a healthy lifestyle at the same time as running and working out a lot, it’s a surefire recipe for injury.

For most of us, when we encounter a problem, we simply want to solve it. This desire comes from a place of good intent. We like to help people. However, this instinct often gets us into trouble. We don’t always remember to question the framing of the problem. We tend to fall in love with our first solution. We forget to ask, “How else might we solve this problem?” These problems get compounded when working in teams. When we hear a problem, we each individually jump to a fast solution. When we disagree, we engage in fruitless opinion battles. These opinion battles encourage us to fall back on our organizational roles and claim decision authority (e.g., the product manager has the final say), instead of collaborating as a cross-functional team. When a team takes the time to visualize their options, they build a shared understanding of how they might reach their desired outcome. If they maintain this visual as they learn week over week, they maintain that shared understanding, allowing them to collaborate over time. We know this collaboration is critical to product success.

Deprive a cat of sleep and it would die in two weeks. Deprive a human and he would become psychotic. His work was killing people. How was he supposed to frighten these guys? Run up behind them in a halloween mask and shout boo? He never saw the point of views -- what did it matter if it was an ocean or a brick wall you were looking at? People travelled hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles to commit suicide someplace with a beautiful view. Did a view matter when oblivion beckoned? They could put him in a garbage bin after he was gone, for all he cared. That's all the human race was anyway. Garbage with attitude. A cutting word is worse than a bowstring. A cut may heal but a cut of the tongue does not. The Sakawa students were all from poor, underprivileged backgrounds. Sakawa was a mix of religious juju and modern internet technology. They were taught, in structured classes, the art of online fraud as well as arcane African rituals -- which included animal sacrifice -- to have a voodoo effect on their victims, ensuring the success of each fraud. of which there was a wide variety. The British Empire spend five hundred years plundering the world. The word is 'thanks'. 'That's what it is, Roy! He won't come out, he has locked the doors! What if he self-harms, Roy! I mean -- what if he kills himself?' 'I will have to take him off my Christmas list.' "Any chance you can recover any of it?' 'You sitting near a window, Gerry?' 'Near a window? Sure, right by a window?' 'Can you see the sky?' 'Uh-huh. Got a clear view.' 'See any pigs flying past?' To dream of death is good for those in fear, for the death have no more fears. '...Cleo took me to the opera once. I spent the whole time praying for a fat lady to come on stage and start singing. Or a heart attack --whichever come sooner.' '..there is something strongly powerful -- almost magnetic -- about internet romances. A connection that is far stronger than a traditional meeting of two people. Maybe because on the internet you can lie all the time, each person gives the other their good side. It's intoxicating. That's one of the things which makes it so dangerous -- and such easy pickings for fraudsters.' He was more than a little pleased that he was about to ruin his boss's morning -- and, with a bit of luck, his entire day. ..a guy who had been born angry and had just got even angrier with each passing year. '...Then at some point in the future, I'll probably die in an overcrowded hospital corridor with some bloody hung-over medical student jumping up and down on my chest because they couldn't find a defibrillator. 'Give me your hand, bro,' the shorter one said. 'That one, the right one, yeah.' On the screen the MasterChef contestant said, 'Now with a sharp knife...' Jules de Copland drove away from Gatwick Airport in.a new car, a small Kia, hired under a different name and card, from a different rental firm, Avis. 'I was talking about her attitude. But I'll tell you this, Roy. The day I can't say a woman -- or a man -- is plug ugly, that's the day I want to be taken out and shot.' It seems to me the world is in a strange place where everyone chooses to be offended all the time. 'But not too much in the way of brains,' GlennBranson chipped in. 'Would have needed the old Specialist Search Unite to find any trace of them.' 'Ever heard of knocking on a door?' 'Dunno that film -- was it on Netflix?' 'One word, four letters. Begins with an S for Sierra, ends with a T for Tango. Or if you'd like the longest version, we've been one word, six letters, begins with F for Foxtrot, ends with D for Delta.' No Cop liked entering a prison. In general there was a deep cultural dislike of all police officers by the inmates. And every officer entering.a prison, for whatever purposes, was always aware that if a riot kicked off while they were there, they could be both an instant hostage and a prime target for violence.

Deprive a cat of sleep and it would die in two weeks. Deprive a human and he would become psychotic. His work was killing people. How was he supposed to frighten these guys? Run up behind them in a halloween mask and shout boo? He never saw the point of views -- what did it matter if it was an ocean or a brick wall you were looking at? People travelled hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles to commit suicide someplace with a beautiful view. Did a view matter when oblivion beckoned? They could put him in a garbage bin after he was gone, for all he cared. That's all the human race was anyway. Garbage with attitude. A cutting word is worse than a bowstring. A cut may heal but a cut of the tongue does not. The Sakawa students were all from poor, underprivileged backgrounds. Sakawa was a mix of religious juju and modern internet technology. They were taught, in structured classes, the art of online fraud as well as arcane African rituals -- which included animal sacrifice -- to have a voodoo effect on their victims, ensuring the success of each fraud. of which there was a wide variety. The British Empire spend five hundred years plundering the world. The word is 'thanks'. 'That's what it is, Roy! He won't come out, he has locked the doors! What if he self-harms, Roy! I mean -- what if he kills himself?' 'I will have to take him off my Christmas list.' "Any chance you can recover any of it?' 'You sitting near a window, Gerry?' 'Near a window? Sure, right by a window?' 'Can you see the sky?' 'Uh-huh. Got a clear view.' 'See any pigs flying past?' To dream of death is good for those in fear, for the death have no more fears. '...Cleo took me to the opera once. I spent the whole time praying for a fat lady to come on stage and start singing. Or a heart attack --whichever come sooner.' '..there is something strongly powerful -- almost magnetic -- about internet romances. A connection that is far stronger than a traditional meeting of two people. Maybe because on the internet you can lie all the time, each person gives the other their good side. It's intoxicating. That's one of the things which makes it so dangerous -- and such easy pickings for fraudsters.' He was more than a little pleased that he was about to ruin his boss's morning -- and, with a bit of luck, his entire day. ..a guy who had been born angry and had just got even angrier with each passing year. '...Then at some point in the future, I'll probably die in an overcrowded hospital corridor with some bloody hung-over medical student jumping up and down on my chest because they couldn't find a defibrillator. 'Give me your hand, bro,' the shorter one said. 'That one, the right one, yeah.' On the screen the MasterChef contestant said, 'Now with a sharp knife...' Jules de Copland drove away from Gatwick Airport in.a new car, a small Kia, hired under a different name and card, from a different rental firm, Avis. 'I was talking about her attitude. But I'll tell you this, Roy. The day I can't say a woman -- or a man -- is plug ugly, that's the day I want to be taken out and shot.' It seems to me the world is in a strange place where everyone chooses to be offended all the time. 'But not too much in the way of brains,' GlennBranson chipped in. 'Would have needed the old Specialist Search Unite to find any trace of them.' 'Ever heard of knocking on a door?' 'Dunno that film -- was it on Netflix?' 'One word, four letters. Begins with an S for Sierra, ends with a T for Tango. Or if you'd like the longest version, we've been one word, six letters, begins with F for Foxtrot, ends with D for Delta.' No Cop liked entering a prison. In general there was a deep cultural dislike of all police officers by the inmates. And every officer entering.a prison, for whatever purposes, was always aware that if a riot kicked off while they were there, they could be both an instant hostage and a prime target for violence.

Maybe we’ve gone soft. Gotten used to the relative safety of the farms in the past week. But Mack slows down immediately, and I jump off without hesitation so I can run over to help. I should know better. We both should. But things have felt settled and secure since we got together for real, like the worst of the danger should be over. But we still live in the world. And The Wild has never been safe. And this is undoubtedly a trap for the most gullible of travelers. Evidently today that’s us. Before I can reach the prostrate woman, a man steps out from behind a thick tree. The woman isn’t armed, but he is. And he lifts his pistol, aiming it unwaveringly at the largest threat. That’s Mack, of course. I can’t even take a breath before he’s pulled the trigger, firing directly at Mack. I act on pure instinct. Not because I’ve thought it through in even the slightest of ways. This stranger is shooting a gun at Mack, and Mack will always—always, always—be mine. So I jump right at the man, blocking Mack from the bullet that would have killed him. Unfortunately that means the bullet hits me instead.

Hey, Dylan,” I said, holding my orange ball. “You got rid of the Mohawk.” Lark and Raven’s stepbrother ran his hand over his bald head and sighed. “Yeah, I’d been thinking about going the business man route for a while. Kept going back and forth about cutting it. A few weeks ago, I got drunk at Lark’s place. The sisters were nice enough to shave my head while I was passed out.” Nearby, Raven laughed so hard she had trouble distracting Vaughn who was still trying to win the game. Dylan glared at her then shrugged. “Gonna let it grow out and play the average Joe shit.” “Good luck with that,” I said, glancing at the bathroom and hoping Bailey would appear. When she didn’t, I walked to an open lane and rolled the ball. It took out a single pin which was one more than I expected. A lane away Raven struggled to win against Vaughn. She bent over one direction. When her ass didn’t do it, she bent forward and adjusted her tits. A distracted Vaughn missed his strike with a single pin remaining. Before I could hear him complain and her celebrate, Cooper and Tucker appeared next to me. “I liked the way you handled that fucker,” Tucker said, arms crossed tightly. “You always know how to deal with these losers while looking like a Boy Scout. A good skill to have.” Ignoring them, I rolled the second ball and managed to take out three pins. A new record for me. “What’s with the silent shit?” Tucker asked. Sighing, I looked at them and frowned. “I want to be with Bailey. We just started dating, but here I am jumping through hoops for you two. You do this shit with every guy?” “Most are losers,” Cooper said. “Most never do the second date thing. They bang then hang. If they’re lucky, she never mentions it to us and we don’t kick anyone’s ass. You’re the first boyfriend type she’s had.” “Our family needs good people,” added Tucker. Cooper shifted his stance and shook his head at his brother. “He doesn’t want that life. Nick wants to be a teacher.” “Why?” “Who cares?” Cooper said. “It’s what he wants. Sounds like a nice safe life for our little sister, don’t you think?” Tucker’s expression froze and his dopey brain took awhile to put things together. By the time he figured it out, I’d rolled a gutter ball, Bailey returned, and Vaughn declared his wife a cheater. “It’s only fair!” Raven cried as Vaughn threw her over his shoulder and spun her around. “You’re a better bowler and I want to win. Cheating was the only card I could play.” “Making me think some fucker was looking at your ass was low, Raven.” “So is naming our first born son Maverick. You’re just looking for trouble with a name like that.” Vaughn lowered her to her feet then grinned. “My boys will be nothing but trouble. They’ll own this town and chase pretty girls like Scarlet and Lily.” “Hey, keep your pervy kid away from my daughter!” Tucker hollered, looking pissed. Cooper grabbed his brother and they wrestled onto the ground. By the end of pounding each other, they were both laughing.

At the risk of sounding extreme, let me give you an example from my own case files that sets the tone for this chapter. Kate had never been on an antidepressant and never suffered from depression, but she felt overwhelmed and frazzled after the birth of her first baby. At her six-week postpartum follow-up appointment, her obstetrician prescribed Zoloft. Within one week of starting it, she had written a suicide note and was planning to jump off of her fifteenth-floor Manhattan balcony. She said to me, “It just made sense at the time. And I felt really detached about it, like it was nothing.” Kate’s experience is not an outlier. She is among millions of women who are reflexively prescribed medication for symptoms of distress. She’s also among those who have serious side effects that may seem like part of the depression—not a result of the drugs. Rather

tape already marked the area around the body. A first responding officer jumped to his feet, holding the scene log on a clipboard. “Good morning, sir.” The young man spoke in the nasal voice of someone whose nose is blocked. Lei spotted white cotton sprouting from his nostrils. “Hey. Nice up here if it weren’t for the smell.” She took the clipboard, and each of them signed in. Passing the tape, Lei spotted the hand first, extended toward them from beneath the ferns, palm up. The tissue was swollen and discolored, masked in a filmy gray gauze of mold that seemed to be drawing the body down into the forest floor. Lei could imagine that in just a few weeks, the body would have been all but gone in the biology of the cloud forest. The victim lay on his stomach, his head turned away and facing into a fern clump, black hair already looking like just another lichen growing on the forest floor. The body was at the expansion phase, distending camouflage-patterned clothing as if inflated. A black fiberglass arrow fletched in plastic protruded from the man’s back. Lei and Pono stayed well back from the body. Lei unpacked the police department’s camera from her backpack, and Pono took out his crime kit. The modest quarter-karat engagement

Arik had already gone two weeks longer than usual for this haircut because of an overseas business trip. Time to get back to his highest priority. “How long until Dominic is back?” “A week, maybe two. I told him to take his time. Granddad doesn’t often take time off, and he’s getting up there in years.” A few weeks? He’d look like a wildebeest if he waited that long. “That’s no good. I need a cut. Are there any male barbers available?” “Afraid to let a girl touch your precious hair?” She smirked. “I can peek at the schedule and see if we can squeeze you in this afternoon.” “I don’t have time to come back. I need it done now.” Usually when he used the word now, people jumped to do his bidding. She, on the other hand, shook her head. “Not happening, unless you’ve changed your mind and are willing to let me cut it.” “You’re a hairdresser.” “Exactly.” “I want a barber.” “Same thing.” Said the girl without a Y chromosome. “I think I’ll wait.” Arik turned away from her, only to freeze as she muttered, “Pussy.” If she only knew how right she was. But, of course, she didn’t mean the feline version. Pride made him pivot back. “You know what. On second thought, you may cut my hair.” “How gracious of you, Your Majesty.” She sketched him a mock bow. Not funny, even if accurate. He glared in reply. “I see someone’s too uptight for a sense of humor.” “I greatly enjoy comedy, when I hear it.” “Sorry if my brand of sarcasm is too simple for you to understand, big guy. Now, if you’re done, sit down so we can get this over with and send you and your precious hair back to your office.

Final checklist To significantly increase the quantity and quality of ideas that you generate, reading this book isn’t enough. You need to make principles from this book a part of your own habits. Below you will find the 7 most fundamental principles of creating successful business ideas. Write them down on a sheet of paper and hang it near the desk where you work or near your bed. Over the next 3 weeks, think for at least 15-30 minutes per day about ideas using these principles. These can be ideas that will help you improve your business, achieve your dreams or make your life more interesting. I promise you that by the end of these 3 weeks you will notice a significant jump in your creative performance. 1. Collect raw materials. Ideas are combinations or modifications of other ideas. The more you know the ideas of other people and the more life experiences you expose yourself to, the more creative raw materials you have. The more creative raw materials you have, the more combinations your subconscious mind will be able to make and the more likely you are to create new valuable and interesting ideas. 2. Set the task for the subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind is a powerful thinking mechanism, but it remains idle if you haven’t given it a task. Once you begin giving your subconscious questions to think about regularly, you will notice how the quantity and quality of your ideas will skyrocket. 3. Separate analyzing and generating ideas. When you are analyzing ideas, your analytical brain blocks your superfast creative brain from thinking. To let the creative brain do its work, separate the processes of analyzing and generating ideas. 4. Think and rest. The most effective thinking algorithm is the following: think about a problem for an extensive period of time, forget about the problem and rest, occasionally think about the problem for few minutes and forget about it again. The incubation period when you don’t think about the problem is essential for your subconscious mind to process millions of thoughts and combinations of ideas, however to give it a task you need to think for some time about the problem consciously. 5. Generate many ideas. In creative thinking, quantity equals quality. You can’t generate one great idea. However, you can generate many ideas and select one or several great ideas out of them. 6. Have fun. Your subconscious mind thinks most effectively when you have fun. When you are serious, you are very unlikely to create really creative and valuable ideas. 7. Believe and desire. Believe that you will generate great ideas and have a burning desire to generate them. If you do, great ideas will come to you in abundance and sooner or later the problem will be solved. Once you have made these 7 principles a part of your own creative habits, glance through the book again and practice other principles and techniques. In a year’s time of practicing generating ideas regularly, you will become a world-class creative thinker. The skill of creating ideas will make your business successful and your life an adventure. I wish you good luck in creating successful ideas and in achieving all your dreams in business.

something like jumping off a fifty-foot ledge into an ice-cold ocean of uncertainty where I must teach myself to swim in the eight seconds before I go under--because the greatest treasure in the world is waiting on shore, if I can only reach it.

I don’t blame them. After seven weeks, Sarah’s disappearance was a footnote unless something significant happened to draw attention back to it. Nothing had.” “What about the reward?” “That also never came up at trial.” Dan squinted as if fighting a headache. “Given that Hagen’s testimony provided Calloway and Clark what they needed to convince Judge Sullivan to issue the search warrants, Finn should have jumped all over Hagen about every detail, especially because Hagen also laid the groundwork for Calloway’s testimony the next day.” Roy Calloway sat in the witness chair as if he was seated in his living room and everyone else in the courtroom was an invited guest. The rain ticked off the second-story wood-sash windows, sounding like birds pecking against the glass. Tracy looked out at the trees in the courthouse square, their soaked limbs sagging. Smoke curled from the chimneys of houses in the near distance, but the bucolic image only seemed to magnify the illusion that Edmund House had exposed. Small towns were not immune to violent crimes. Far from it. Clark stepped to the railing of the jury box. “When did you next return to Parker House’s property, Sheriff Calloway?

Just a simple premise, back in San Diego DUI Lawyer arrested for drunk Style, this time in the direction of DUI and DWI generally unwanted, then little effect of alcohol is considered a leading progressive life. Americans in the second half of the US states, the sin just because the rules and stricter drunk driving laws more quickly hold. In addition, the results of all DUI lawyers in reality very difficult drive under the influence towards an unattainable production, to begin in San Diego that idea. The crime of DUI evaluation Provide always stops short of energy, but in reality because of traffic law enforcement to detect beautiful website, or you attack affects themselves can take to throw noted "checkpoints drinking water.” In some cases, the federal government said, but if you can do it in your own direction. Perhaps many car hit the rear part of the food as a result, the impact is recorded, your visit to show you the direction of your wine. Sometimes, someone reported an unstable support. Testing and observation around the federal government s decision in the same direction, it is not possible because most almost certainly to predict a jump back in their element. One or suspected poisoning at an affordable price set is designed to bring cases, their own rules and objectives, and with violation of traffic rules and the management style of the design more I can do for others the problem of selection that. They probably own the actual direction of their own drug, think about the purpose of the implementation of a user, then the friendly and with respect to speed, self-revealed the reason behind the purple party, appreciate it is also possible to DUI . San Diego right outcome for prison several internal unique opportunity, California expert is passed on to its customers and the code of .08% blood only a small car in California 23 152 (B) to answer good article Content (BAC) Assumption. Some of the inspiration for a special person for a month was necessary direction behind a person s mood, depends on you in the direction 23 § 152, may continue to be withheld because (). But in general, if not more, the sales people and just keep moving to stay DUI by police and they are removed direction or enough I began to feel, "personal involvement" is more than if under strict bail. Own all presentation of their work is to show. It s just maybe you just conditions, it is deposited in jail until eventually show itself may not be able to move allows. Expenses and income are affected by lead you affects costs, which child to leave behind, if not more than 0.08 per cent BAC does. Orientation, under the influence of the value of his research, the car broke into the possibility that some 23 152 have been found still proof (s). This is a normal move, and then the authority to suspend the system 6 is due to the fact that - 10 weeks, including perceived importance. Speaking of the court will have to apply for leave to the invention apparently drunk over in his address. Need him inside, a number of situations, the judge called a good time without alcohol can be. It is a matter, as long as the direction before the costly DUI do not experience a period of several weeks is legal. Worse, if there is only a repeat show that only a lawyer in San Diego drunk orientation. Too many of the legal rights of citizens under such guidelines as privatization and arms, vote. You own run for the benefit of all to make the removal of the time, which likely cost drivers behind the repeat drink. It is strong enough to get to San Diego recommends a good DUI is for that reason that the domestic legal experts. Obviously, the motivation many cases immediately, in simplest terms, is not swallowed. Self re direction is not the same thing, so you really recommended maximum future problem is to apply to yourself. This is a perfect example of the court had been found.

Going to the office wasn't as pleasant lately, Sam thought, as he made his way through the back entry to the detectives' division. There weren't so many people there that day, and it seemed like a lot of them were avoiding the place, just staying away as much as they could. He could understand that. After almost ten years as a Denver cop, Sam was sick of seeing what humanity was really capable of. He had grown up reading cop stories, always seeing how the cops would save the day, watching them rescue the innocent and punish the guilty every week on TV, until he finally knew that he had to be one himself. After a short stint in the Army that never even got him out of the country, he'd come home and applied for the academy. He'd been accepted, and that was the start of an illustrious career. Now, it was all he could do to drag himself out of bed in the mornings, make himself come in and see what new horrors he'd have to deal with. The past four months he'd been on loan to the DEA, and they'd made some big drug busts, shut down some of the most evil purveyors of sin and death that ever lived, but they were like the mythical hydra—as soon as you cut off one of its heads, three more grew back to take its place. Sam wanted to stop cutting off heads and find the creature's heart, but there was almost no evidence as to where that heart might be. They knew there was something big behind the drug operations in the city, but it was so well organized and so carefully designed that no one seemed to have any idea where or how to find it. His cell rang as he sat down at his desk, and he saw his partner's number. Dan Jacobs was already out on his station, watching one of the dealers they'd identified the day before. “Yo,” Sam answered. “Sam, it's Dan. I been thinkin', and it seems to me that we might be lookin' in the wrong direction, y'know?” Sam blinked a couple of times. “Danny, I've been awake for about fifteen minutes, and haven't even opened my Starbuck's yet. What the heck are you talkin' about?” “I'm sayin', maybe we're goin' about this all the wrong way, tryin' to find dealers and trail 'em, follow the tracks up the ladder. There's something about this whole setup that smacks of serious organization, something big enough to hide in plain sight, know what I mean? If it's that well laid out, we can follow minions all day long, we're never gonna find the top guy, because they don’t ever see the top guys.” Sam nodded. “Yeah, you're probably right,” he said, “but unless you got a crystal ball lead on where else to go, I don’t know what good it's doin' us. Where else we gonna find any leads at all? Got a clue, there?” “Maybe,” Dan said. “We've been tailing a lot of these clowns the past few weeks, right? Have you noticed one thing they all do the same?” Sam thought about it, but nothing jumped out at him. He looked at it from a couple of different angles, then shook his head. Into the phone, he said, “Nope. So, what is it?” “Facebook. No matter what else they're doin', these bastards never miss checking in on Facebook every day, several times a day. They go on, look at what people are sayin' on their pages, sometimes they answer and sometimes they don't, and then they go back to their drug dealin' ways.” Sam rubbed his temple. “Dan, everyone does that. Everyone on freakin' earth is on Facebook, and always checkin' it out. That's just part

Looks like we found it." John said. "Where are we?" As far as Link could tell, there was nothing to find. John pointed up at the white signs at the intersection that read 61 and 49, and Liv checked her selonometer as if they weren't standing in the middle of nowhere. "Are those numbers supposed to mean something to us?" Floyd asked. "We're at the intersection of Highways 61 and 49 in Clarksdale, Mississippi," John said. Sampson shook his head. " I feel like an idiot. Any guitar player worth his strings knows about this place. It's where Robert Johnson made a deal with the Devil." Floyd's eyes widened. "Seriously? We're at the crossroads?" John nodded. "The one and only." Liv glanced at John. "I'm assuming this is an American thing?" He put his arm around her. "Yeah, sorry. It's an old rock and roll myth- at least as far as mortals are concerned. In the 1930s, a blues musician named Robert Johnson disappeared for a couple of weeks. According to the story, he brought his guitar right here to this crossroads-" Link jumped in. "Then he traded his soul to become the most famous blues guitarist in history." Sampson tugged on his leather pants, which weren't the best choice in the Mississippi heat. "Totally a fair trade, as far as I'm concerned." "Thought the same thing myself," a man's voice called out from behind them. Link wheeled around. A young man wearing a wrinkled white shirt, a black jacket, and a Panama hat stood on the side of the road with a three-legged black Labrador. There was a weariness in the man's eyes of someone much older. A battered guitar hung from a strap slung around his back.

Let’s end by pointing out all the positive ways you can scare yourself and feel alive. You can tell someone you love them first. You can try to speak only the truth for a whole week. You can jump out of an airplane or spend Christmas Day all by your lonesome. You can help people who need help and fight real bad guys. You can dance fast or take an improv class or do one of those Ironman things. Adventure and danger can be good for your heart and soul. Violence and desperation are brutal things to search out. Why search out the horror? It’s around us in real ways every day. I’m talking to you, the people who made that movie The Human Centipede. No more Human Centipede movies please (...)The whole idea of making and watching a movie like that makes me want to take a ten-year nap

One in particular catches my eye, because I’ve met him, and also his father. “You’re kidding me? The little guy who came over on the boat last week? He's a baby!” Okay, not a baby exactly, and I guess it was only last week from my perspective. Simon finally convinced the elder Kiernan Dunne to bring his family over from Ireland. I helped, mostly by spending a few minutes talking to the woman, Cliona. She seemed a little in awe of me, probably because Simon was laying on the Sister Prudence stuff really thick. I told Cliona about the Farm up near Chicago—one of the five we have in the US now—and how there was plenty of work for them, and plenty of food. The kid clutching her skirts couldn’t have been much more than four, a dark-eyed little guy who didn’t say much. He didn’t look like he’d been eating much lately either. “A baby?” Older-Me rolls her eyes. “Do you know how stupid that sounds? By all means, jump forward to when he's eighty if that's what turns you on. You saw him back at the Cyrus Teed resurrection, didn’t you? He’s growing up nicely.

It wasn’t something that would last, we both knew that, but it was a small, quick delight, and sometimes in this world, there was nothing wrong with that. I stumbled back across campus. There were students still out. I tried to stay in the shadows, but Barry, the student who visits my office weekly, spotted me and cried out, “Taking the walk of shame, Teach?” Caught. I gave him a good-hearted wave and continued serpentine-style to my humble abode. A sudden head rush hit me as I entered. I stayed still, waiting for my legs to come back to me. When the dizziness receded, I headed into the kitchen and grabbed a glass of ice water. I drank it in big gulps and poured another. I would be hurting tomorrow, no question about it. Exhaustion weighed down my bones. I stepped into my bedroom and flicked on the light. There, sitting on the edge of my bed, was the man with the maroon baseball cap. I jumped back, startled. The man gave me a friendly wave. “Hey, Jake. Sheesh, look at you. Have you been out carousing?” For a second, no more, I just stood there. The man smiled at me as though this were the most natural encounter in the history of the world. He even touched the front of his cap at me, as though he were a professional golfer acknowledging the gallery. “Who the hell are you?” I asked. “That’s not really relevant, Jake.” “Like hell it isn’t. Who are you?” The man sighed, let down, it seemed, by my seemingly irrational insistence on knowing his identity. “Let’s just say I’m a friend.” “You were in the café. In Vermont.” “Guilty.” “And

He lifted me up and sat me on the counter, gave me another kiss that almost reduced me to a puddle and walked over to Jeremy, “Come help me with the ice chests.” “Brandon! I just barely got down from the counter, and Jeremy had to help me!” “I know.” He smiled wickedly and walked out to the garage. I turned to Konrad, “Care to help?” “Ya know, I forgot to get the ice from the store … wanna go with me baby?” He grabbed Bree’s hand and led her quickly out of the kitchen. Jerks. Looking to the only person left in the room I added dryly, “Want to join?” Aubrey walked up next to me and had to jump three times before she got enough leverage to lift herself all the way up. “They’re really high up, right? It’s not just me?” “No, it’s definitely not just you.” She said softly and tucked her hair behind her ears, “Thank you so much for having us, this is really sweet of you.” “Of course! It’s fun to do. I apologize in advance if it gets rowdy. I don’t know much about the guys coming.” She laughed and swung her legs back and forth, “That’s fine.” Man, did I talk this soft too? “So tell me, how did you meet Jeremy?” “Um, school.” “Oh yeah? How long have you been dating?” Aubrey blushed fiercely and looked over to the door leading to the garage, “Only a week. He asked me out a few times last year, we were Chemistry partners, but I don’t know … he scared me.” “What? Why?” “Well I mean, besides his size, he’s really popular and outgoing. He was already popular after his first week at the school, and I knew a lot of girls liked him. I don’t know. Guys like him don’t date girls like me, I thought it was a joke.” The first half of that didn’t surprise me one bit. He’d really filled out in the last year, was built just like Brandon, and looked exactly like him. Their size was intimidating, and they were incredibly handsome. But what the hell? “I’m sorry, I must be missing something, girls like you?” “He plays football and is the captain of the soccer team, I’m not into sports or anything school related really.” “If he’s dating you, then I’m pretty sure that doesn’t matter at all to him. You’re gorgeous Aubrey, and you seem really sweet, it’s not hard to see why he likes you. Jeremy doesn’t just date girls … actually, he hasn’t had a girlfriend in the two years that I’ve been with Brandon. So for him to ask you out is a big thing for him. And those boys don’t have a cruel bone in their body, he would never date you as a joke. He’s just like his brother, they’re extremely protective and devoted to the girls in their life. Nothing less.” She blushed again, “You and Brandon are so perfect together. Jeremy’s told me so much about you both, and seeing you together is cute. It’s obvious how much you love each other.” I smiled and leaned back on my hands, “We are definitely in love.” Brandon

She weaved a spell around him until he forgot everything but the drugging sensation of her mouth. That was, until a cold metal cuff clicked onto his wrist. He jerked back, tugging, only to find that she’d somehow managed to lock the other end to the chair. “What the hell?” She straightened, looking oh so pleased. “Now I’ve got you right where I want you.” He made a grab for her, but she jumped back, sliding onto the desk and out of his grasp. Although he could reach her, he wasn’t able straighten enough to get a good hold on her. He said in his most deadly voice, “I hope you have the key, little girl.” She batted her lashes, slipped a hand into her bra, and extracted a key. “I’ve got it right here.” What was she up to? He narrowed his eyes. “You know, once I get free, I’m going to turn you over this desk and paddle that ass until you can’t sit for a week.” “Sounds like quite a punishment,” she said, not sounding scared at all. The little vixen. Despite

Rach?” he called, and hit Mason’s arm. Mason turned from locking their door as Kash took the few steps toward us. “Rachel, what’s wrong?” “The cats, dear.” Mrs. Adams looked at him with a worried expression. “They’ve all gone! Rachel must help me find them.” His wide eyes searched my face and I dropped my head quickly; my wet hair fell like a useless curtain and I flinched when Kash grabbed my free wrist. He dropped it quickly and spoke softly. “You know, Mrs. Adams, Rachel isn’t feeling well. I’ll help you find your cats today.” “Oh, but—you’re a boy! They won’t respond to a boy!” “Yes they will, Mrs. Adams. I helped you find them last week, don’t you remember?” “Well then come, hurry! We need to find them.” She turned and shuffled back toward her door. “Smokey! Honey, come back to Mama!” “Rachel, are—” The buzzer on the washer sounded and I jumped back, hitting the half-open door and almost falling when it swung the rest of the way from my weight. “Christ, Rach!” Kash grabbed for me and his eyes got wide again when he felt my body vibrating. “Mase! Take her into our apartment, I’ll be right back.” “N-no. I’m fine.” I pulled away from him, but he brought me out of the doorway and handed me to Mason. Jerking back again, I pleaded on a sob, “Stop touching me!” Both guys dropped their hold on me and their hands went up, as if they were surrendering. Mason’s deep voice was soft and slow. “Sweetheart, come on. I won’t touch you. Let’s just get you in our apartment. All right? Are you feeling sick? Do you want me to call Candice?” “No! Please don’t—don’t call her!” “Okay, I won’t. Come on, sweetheart. We’ll take care of you.” I

Furi narrowed his eyes again and stepped into Syn’s space. “Are you gay, Detective?” There it was. The million-dollar question. Was he gay? He’d never asked himself that. He’d only slept with women before, but had never felt anything more for them than an easy friends-with-benefits involvement. Rhodes was the only person that he’d ever felt a connection with. A man. Syn felt his mouth move, but no sound was coming out. Fuck. Furi looked at him skeptically. “Uh huh. Just like I thought. Who are you working for? Him. He send you? Did he hire you to find me? Are you a private detective?” That accusation cut through Syn's speechlessness. “Whoa. I work for the city of Atlanta. What are you talking about? Who is him? Is someone after you?” Syn didn’t realize he’d grabbed Furi’s shoulders, forcing him to look into his eyes until Furi threw his arms up and dislodged Syn’s grip. “Take your goddamn hands off of me! I’m sick of people thinking they can put their fucking hands on me! Stay the fuck away from me, Detective.” Furi shoved past him and reached for the door. Syn jumped in front of it before Furi could get it open. He yelled right back at Furi, “My name is Syn! I’m not here as a Detective! I don’t know who him is, nor do I work for him.” Syn put up air quotes for the word him. “I just wanted to talk to you!” “About what?” Furi yelled. They were in each other’s faces, chest bumping each other. “I don’t fucking know! About you. About me. About the damn Falcons' game last week. About the weather. About why there’s so many goddamn reality TV shows. About what-the-hell-ever! That’s what people do when they want to get to know someone!” Syn stepped back and gripped his hair blowing out a long frustrated breath. He felt so ridiculous, was so annoyed that he was seconds away from just walking away. “Fuck! I didn’t think dating was this damn hard.

Um, we’ll ask your mom. Okay, bunny?” The classic answer he used so often. “Bunny?!” she squealed. “I’m not a bunny!” In spite of her words she jumped to her feet. He waved a hand at her. “Are you sure you’re not a bunny? You just jumped up like a bunny.” Giggling, she circled the little wooden table they sat at and shoved a tiny fist into his shoulder. Chad pretended to be wounded, falling from the pint-sized chair to the floor, moaning in pain. Mercy did not live up to her name as she tackled him while he was down, tickling him in the sides at an especially sensitive spot she’d found weeks ago. It had been another wrestling session, but in her defense, she was only protecting herself from her own tickling attack. Laughing hard, trying to get away from her sharp little fingers, Chad rolled across the room, being impaled by Mega-bloks in his back. He finally cried uncle and Mercy fell across him, her hands in the air in victory. “You’re going to give me a complex, little girl.” “What’s

Young Turks Billy left his home with a dollar in his pocket and a head full of dreams. He said somehow, some way, it's gotta get better than this. Patti packed her bags, left a note for her momma, she was just seventeen, there were tears in her eyes when she kissed her little sister goodbye. They held each other tight as they drove on through the night they were so exited. We got just one shot of life, let's take it while we're still not afraid. Because life is so brief and time is a thief when you're undecided. And like a fistful of sand, it can slip right through your hands. Young hearts be free tonight. Time is on your side, Don't let them put you down, don't let 'em push you around, don't let 'em ever change your point of view. Paradise was closed so they headed for the coast in a blissful manner. They took a tworoom apartment that was jumping ev'ry night of the week. Happiness was found in each other's arms as expected, yeah Billy pierced his ears, drove a pickup like a lunatic, ooh! Young hearts be free tonight.Time is on your side, Don't let them put you down, don't let 'em push you around, don't let 'em ever change your point of view. Young hearts be free tonight.Time is on your side. Billy wrote a letter back home to Patti's parents tryin' to explain. He said we're both real sorry that it had to turn out this way. But there ain't no point in talking when there's nobody list'ning so we just ran away Patti gave birth to a ten pound baby boy, yeah! Young hearts be free tonight, time is on your side. Young hearts be free tonight, time is on your side. Young hearts be free tonight, time in on your side. Young hearts gotta run free, be free, live free Time is on, time is on your side Time, time, time, time is on your side is on your side is on your side is on your side Young heart be free tonight tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight, yeah

Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work….” —Deuteronomy 5:13 (NIV) Henry spread a soft blanket across the living room floor. I thought he was going to lie down and read a book, but then when I looked up from my newspaper, he was on all fours spreading out another blanket beside the first one. “What are you doing, Hen?” I asked. “I’m making a soft world,” he said. I went back to reading my article and pushed away thoughts that I should go upstairs to my home office and get a jump start on the week ahead by checking e-mail and diving into my projects. I heard Henry go upstairs and then I heard thump, thump, thump as he came down, his arms overflowing with blankets from his bed. His brother Solomon rested in his favorite reading spot with his nose in a book. His father worked on the Sunday crossword, and I went back to the paper. I kept one eye watching Henry cover the living room floor with blankets, pillows, and a bunch of his stuffed animals. When everything was just so, every pillow exactly where he wanted, he rolled around on his favorite blue blanket, grinning from ear to ear. “Like it? This is my soft world.” He hugged his favorite stuffed dinosaur. I’m so glad I stayed downstairs with my family. Had I gone off to do work, I would have missed the soft world. Dear God, thank You for the day of rest— just what I need to relax and feel blessed. —Sabra Ciancanelli Digging Deeper: Gn 2:3; Lk 6:1–11

When she saw it was Ian, a little jolt went through her system. She wished that would stop happening. When he’d called earlier in the week to ask if she could watch Jacob today, her heart had jumped as if she were a teenager hearing from the cutest boy in class. After the call had ended, she’d found herself singing “I Feel Pretty” from West Side Story.

I would use the first week of the moon to organize chapters, do interviews, and talk with friends and colleagues about the ideas I was working on. In the second, more intense week, I would lock myself in my office, set to task, and get the most writing done. In the third week, I would edit what I had written, read new material, jump ahead to whatever section I felt like working on, and try out new ideas. And in the final week, I would revisit structure, comb through difficult passages, and recode the nightmare that is my website. My own experience is that my productivity went up by maybe 40 percent, and my peace of mind about the whole process of writing was utterly transformed for the better. Though certainly anecdotal as far as anyone else

He’d stopped talking about bonding her to him forever and had apparently decided to concentrate on being charming instead. Liv never would have believed that such an intensely alpha male could be light and playful but she had been seeing an entirely different side of Baird lately. Aside from the sushi class, he’d also taken her to an alien petting zoo where she was able to see and touch animals that were native to the three home worlds of the Kindred and they’d been twice to the Kindred version of a movie theater where the seats were wired to make the viewer feel whatever was happening on the screen. He’d also taken her to a musical performance where the musicians played giant drums bigger than themselves and tiny flutes smaller than her pinky finger. The music had been surprisingly beautiful—the melodies sweet and haunting and Liv had been moved. But it was the evenings they spent alone together in the suite that made Liv really believe she was in danger of feeling too much. Baird cooked for her—sometimes strange but delicious alien dishes and once Earth food, when she’d taught him how to make cheeseburgers. They ate in the dim, romantic light of some candle-like glow sticks he’d placed on the table and there was always very good wine or the potent fireflower juice to go with the meal. Liv was very careful not to over-imbibe because she needed every ounce of willpower she had to remember why she was holding out. For dessert Baird always made sure there was some kind of chocolate because he’d learned from his dreams how much she loved it. Liv had been thinking lately that she might really be in trouble if she didn’t get away from him soon. If all he’d had going for him was his muscular good looks she could have resisted easily enough. But he was thoughtful too and endlessly interested in her—asking her all kinds of questions about her past and friends and family as well as people he’d seen while they were “dream-sharing” as he called it. Liv found herself talking to him like an old friend, actually feeling comfortable with him instead of being constantly on her guard. She knew that Baird was actively wooing her, doing everything he could to earn her affection, but even knowing that couldn’t stop her from liking him. She had never been so ardently pursued in her life and she was finding that she actually liked it. Baird had taken her more places and paid her more attention in the past week than Mitch had for their entire relationship. It was intoxicating to always be the center of the big warrior’s attention, to know that he was focused exclusively on her needs and wants. But attention and attraction aside, there was another factor that was making Liv desperate to get away. Just as he had predicted, the physical attraction she felt for Baird seemed to be growing exponentially. She only had to be in the same room with him for a minute or two, breathing in his warm, spicy scent, and she was instantly ready to jump his bones. The need was growing every day and Liv didn’t know how much longer she could fight it.

Uh…” Liv laughed nervously. “I’m so sorry—I didn’t mean to jump you like that.” She tried to get off his lap but he pulled her back down. “What’s the rush, Lilenta?” “I…I just…” The words wouldn’t come. Liv had been carefully avoiding getting too close to him for most of the week but now that she was in contact with him again, almost full body contact, whispered the naughty little voice in her head, she was finding it hard to think about anything but how good it felt to have his arms around her and how incredible he smelled. “You just what?” Baird seemed mildly amused. “You just thought you’d come out here dressed in next to nothing and tease me?” “I never thought that!” Liv felt a hot blush climbing her cheeks as she tried again to push away from him. Baird let her sit back a little but he kept her firmly planted in his lap. “Of course you didn’t.” He made a show of looking her up and down, his hot golden gaze taking in everything from the way she was nearly falling out of the grey satin bra cups to the skimpy satin panties that completed the set. “You know, Olivia, I can only think of two reasons you would wear something like this. One, you’ve finally decided to give in and let me bond you.” Liv’s throat finally unlocked. “What’s option number two?” she asked, wishing her voice didn’t sound so squeaky. Baird’s eyes hardened. “Two would be that you thought you could come out here, flash a little skin and then get me on breach of contract and improper touching when I went for you. You think you’re the first bride to have that idea? Hate to break it to you, Lilenta, but it’s been done before to other Kindred. I was wondering when you were going to try it.” “I…I would never…” Liv was mortified that he had seen through her plan so easily. Baird

Um, we’ll ask your mom. Okay, bunny?” The classic answer he used so often. “Bunny?!” she squealed. “I’m not a bunny!” In spite of her words she jumped to her feet. He waved a hand at her. “Are you sure you’re not a bunny? You just jumped up like a bunny.” Giggling, she circled the little wooden table they sat at and shoved a tiny fist into his shoulder. Chad pretended to be wounded, falling from the pint-sized chair to the floor, moaning in pain. Mercy did not live up to her name as she tackled him while he was down, tickling him in the sides at an especially sensitive spot she’d found weeks ago. It had been another wrestling session, but in her defense, she was only protecting herself from her own tickling attack. Laughing hard, trying to get away from her sharp little fingers, Chad rolled across the room, being impaled by Mega-bloks in his back. He finally cried uncle and Mercy fell across him, her hands in the air in victory. “You’re going to give me a complex, little girl.” “What’s a complex?” she asked. Chad rolled his eyes, wondering how he got himself into these situations. “It’s when you make somebody worry about something.” She blinked and her pretty green eyes turned sad. “I’m sorry. I don’t want you to have an ̓omplex. I love you.” Chad stilled, all of the events swirling through the past nine months slowed to focus on this one second. “I love you too, bunny. Bunches. Think your mom has dinner ready yet? Maybe we should go down and cheer her on, you know, to make her cook faster.” Once again, Mercy’s mood lightened. “Yes, let’s do that.” Bouncing