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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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!...

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

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

Here are some strategies and tactics we use to find actual struggling moments when interviewing: Start by interviewing people who have purchased and used our client’s product or a product similar to it. Interview in teams of 2. That way, while you’re jotting down a note or thinking about a response, your interview partner can jump in and keep things moving. Ask them actual questions about their struggles. For example, start with, “Take me back to the last time you did your taxes.” Then, like a cameraman, inspect that moment from all angles until you find the story. Then move on to the next point in their journey, looking for the struggle. Avoid assumptions. We may think that a person is doing their taxes while sitting at home, when in fact, it’s the week before taxes are due, they’re on a cramped airplane that’s about to land, and they’re desperately trying to finish before the steward comes by and tells them to close their laptop.

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

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?

In one set of experiments, for example, researchers affiliated with the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism trained mice to press levers in response to certain cues until the behavior became a habit. The mice were always rewarded with food. Then, the scientists poisoned the food so that it made the animals violently ill, or electrified the floor, so that when the mice walked toward their reward they received a shock. The mice knew the food and cage were dangerous—when they were offered the poisoned pellets in a bowl or saw the electrified floor panels, they stayed away. When they saw their old cues, however, they unthinkingly pressed the lever and ate the food, or they walked across the floor, even as they vomited or jumped from the electricity. The habit was so ingrained the mice couldn’t stop themselves.1.23 It’s not hard to find an analog in the human world. Consider fast food, for instance. It makes sense—when the kids are starving and you’re driving home after a long day—to stop, just this once, at McDonald’s or Burger King. The meals are inexpensive. It tastes so good. After all, one dose of processed meat, salty fries, and sugary soda poses a relatively small health risk, right? It’s not like you do it all the time. But habits emerge without our permission. Studies indicate that families usually don’t intend to eat fast food on a regular basis. What happens is that a once a month pattern slowly becomes once a week, and then twice a week—as the cues and rewards create a habit—until the kids are consuming an unhealthy amount of hamburgers and fries. When researchers at the University of North Texas and Yale tried to understand why families gradually increased their fast food consumption, they found a series of cues and rewards that most customers never knew were influencing their behaviors.1.24 They discovered the habit loop. Every McDonald’s, for instance, looks the same—the company deliberately tries to standardize stores’ architecture and what employees say to customers, so everything is a consistent cue to trigger eating routines. The foods at some chains are specifically engineered to deliver immediate rewards—the fries, for instance, are designed to begin disintegrating the moment they hit your tongue, in order to deliver a hit of salt and grease as fast as possible, causing your pleasure centers to light up and your brain to lock in the pattern. All the better for tightening the habit loop.1.25 However, even these habits are delicate. When a fast food restaurant closes down, the families that previously ate there will often start having dinner at home, rather than seek out an alternative location. Even small shifts can end the pattern. But since we often don’t recognize these habit loops as they grow, we are blind to our ability to control them. By learning to observe the cues and rewards, though, we can change the routines.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

sexual partners, she was either lying, or she’d had it for over a year. But Oliver’s chart didn’t show any symptoms and he hadn’t been prescribed.  Jamie mulled it over in her head then acted on a hunch, pulling open the top right-hand drawer. Inside was a wholesale box of condoms. She stared at it for a second. At least they were using protection. She wondered how many Mary gave out a week. Maybe there had been a third person in their relationship. A scorned ex-boyfriend who didn’t like Oliver? He obviously didn’t know about the rash — or hadn’t noticed. Grace was keeping it from him. Had he found out, confronted Grace’s other boyfriend? Or maybe the other way around. Surprised by the guy? Taken? Tied up and threatened? She had a feeling that the person hadn’t meant to kill him. If you’re going to kill someone, you don’t take their shoes and then dump them in a river. He’d either fallen in accidentally, or he’d jumped. Either way, if there wasn’t an ex — or not ex boyfriend — he was going to be someone Jamie wanted to speak to.  She held Grace’s picture up, looking past the matted hair and sunken eyes. She was young, pretty. She’d have a lot of attention out there on the streets.  Jamie closed the drawer and looked at the file again, searching for a name. She wanted to speak to the doctor. The signature just looked like a wavy line. She’d ask Mary. The chair squeaked as she pushed back from the desk and stood up, keeping the files in hand. Her watch told her it was nearly nine-thirty. Her stomach told her it was time for breakfast. Back in the main room, some of the people had cleared out, venturing back into the city. Looking for some way to get by.  Roper was still talking to Mary, who appeared to be in the middle of a speech about how these people needed more help than anyone was prepared to give, and that Oliver wouldn’t been the last. Jamie stepped around her, piqued. ‘Why do you say that?’ ‘Oh,’ she said, seeing Jamie. ‘Because people don’t want to help them and they let them hurt themselves and each other without paying them any mind.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Each other? Did someone have a problem with Oliver?’ ‘What?’ Mary looked sheepish all of a sudden, as if she’d dropped someone in something. ‘No, no — nothing like that. Not as far as I know, anyway,’ she added quickly. ‘Look, I just want you to find who did this — but for you to know that things are different with them. They don’t act the same — don’t believe in the same things, you know?’ She kept her voice low now. Jamie nodded. She’d worked the streets long enough to know what Mary meant. She’d seen more than she could have ever imagined. Seen people do crazy things. Things that people with something to lose would never think to do.  ‘Mrs Cartwright,’ she said after a second. ‘Grace Melver. She was friends with Oliver?’ ‘Grace?’ Mary’s eyes lit up a little and then tilted down in sadness. ‘What a sweet girl. She’ll be devastated. She’s been back every day to check whether Oliver has turned up. She’s been going out of her mind. Poor girl.’ ‘What was the nature of their relationship?’ Roper held his phone a little higher so the microphone could pick them up more easily. Mary thought for a second, aware of the recording. She chose her words carefully. ‘They were together, I suppose. As much as two people in their situation could be. They looked out for each other. Loved each other.’ ‘Did Grace have any other boyfriends?’ ‘No, no. She was sweet. She loved Oliver.’ ‘She was a heroin user, right?’ Mary looked like her face was about to droop and slip right off her head. ‘Horrible stuff. Though they

And where will this plague of yours come from?” “It will make the jump from animals to humans in a place where sanitary conditions leave something to be desired. A Chinese wet market, for example. It will start slowly, a cluster of local cases. But because we are so interconnected, it will spread around the globe like wildfire. Chinese tourists will bring it to Western Europe in the early stages of the outbreak, even before the virus has been identified. Within a few weeks, half of Italy’s population will be infected, perhaps more. What happens then, Cesare?

I’ll have to throw these jeans away and get new ones,” Luca said. “Unless you want these to make a pair of cut-offs?” “Your jeans would be way too big on me,” she said, not looking up from the bowl of ingredients she was mixing. “But there’s something in them for you.” She chuckled. “I bet there is.” “Naughty girl,” he said. “I mean there’s something in the pocket for you. Do you want it?” She walked over to him and held out her hand. “Sure. Whatever.” He placed a tiny charm in the palm of her hand. A heart. “It’s all yours now,” he said. “Even if you drop it, and step on it, and bend it out of shape, it’s still yours. I don’t want it back.” “You had this in your pocket?” “I’ve had it in my pocket every day for the last three months. Except one day when I thought I lost it in the washing machine, but then I found it in the filter. Don’t worry. It’s clean.” She stared at the heart and thought about all the times she’d taken the alley to work, or ducked into a store to avoid seeing Luca on the street. All the times she’d missed her chance to get Luca’s heart back. “I can understand if you don’t want my stupid heart,” he said. “If I were you, I wouldn’t take me back either, because I’m not always a fan of Luca Lowell. He doesn’t always do the right thing.” “Don’t say that.” “It’s true. If I hadn’t gotten backed into by a truck last night and hadn’t gone to the hospital, I don’t know if you ever would have brought me back to your house. Back into your life.” “My tiny house, and my tiny life.” He shrugged. “It’s big enough for me.” He stretched out on the sectional. “You’ll have a hard time kicking me out again.” “Luca, I can’t make you any promises.” “Yes, you can. You can promise to give me a second chance the next time I screw up.” “You didn’t screw up. I did. I’m the one who kicked you out.” “Then I’ll give you a second chance. I won’t be a chicken and take the alley to work so I don’t run into you.” “You did that?” “Only for about a week, until your sister busted me sneaking through the alley like a burglar, and tore me a new one.” He rubbed his beard. “You know, now that I’m thinking over my conversations with her, it’s all making sense. She must have thought Chris’s wife was my girlfriend. The two of them stop by the garage a lot, but not always together. I thought your sister was being—well, you know how she is—but now I think I understand what was really going on.” Tina looked down at the heart in her palm then at Luca. She closed her fingers around the charm. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not going to drop it again.” There was a scratch at the door. Luca rolled himself along the couch, reached out with one long arm, and opened the door. Muffins strolled in like he owned the place. Luca exclaimed, “Kitty!” Muffins jumped up on the couch and started sniffing Luca’s cast. Then he meowed about dinner. Luca picked the cat up gently and held him like a baby. “You are a cutie patootie,” he said, then he cleared his throat and said gruffly, “Yes, uh. This is a healthy cat specimen. A strong hunter. I can tell by his, uh, ample midsection.” Tina said, “That’s some pretty impressive baby talk for a big, tough guy like you.” “Big, tough guys have feelings, too,” Luca said. “And they like cats.

He started coming into my mouth as, suddenly, fireworks went off nearer the palace. The noise surprised me and I almost jumped back. He clutched me so I couldn’t escape. I swallowed his seed, afraid it would stain my dress. “I—I don’t know if I was supposed to do that.” “Oh no, you did very well. You have earned yourself a week of snubbing anyone you like.” “Then that seems a fair trade to me.

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.

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.

Chapter One Outside Buchanan School. 7:50 AM. Stupid ideas don’t seem so stupid when you’re about to go through with the stupid idea. Really stupid ideas shine brighter the second they enter your brain. Like, “Hey, man, you prob’ly shouldn’t do what you’re about to do!” I like to think of a field of kittens when that happens… makes it easier to ignore my common sense. Ahhhhh… field kittens. My name is Max… and I was about to do something really stupid. The air smelled of freshly cut grass as birds chirped from trees full of leaves. I took a deep breath as I stalled, hoping a meteor would crash into the planet so I wouldn’t have to go through with the thing. Kids just getting to school lined the sidewalk, curious about what was happening. I squeezed the handlebars of my bike, listening to the sound of tightening rubber under my fingers. “Max, you okay?” Beck, my best friend, said from somewhere. I didn’t know where exactly since fear was making everything blurry. I shook my head to clear the fog. “Never been better,” I said. “Are… are the thrusters working?” It took him a second to answer. “I’unno. I never tested ‘em.” I nodded bravely like a hero who was about to meet his maker. “Nice.” It became blazingly obvious that the world wasn’t going to end anytime over the next few seconds, which meant I was gonna have to perform the stunt that everyone was waiting to see. The stunt wasn’t anything crazy – just a kid jumping his bike over the bike rack filled with other bikes. In front of the bike rack was a cement lip that curved at the bottom, making a nice little ramp that everyone joked about jumping their bike off of. I was about to be the kid that did it. Easy enough, right? Well, my buddy, Beck, thought it’d be epic if I attached some thrusters to the back of my bike. No rocket fuel or flames – just a couple of cans of ultra-compressed air that would fire when I flipped the switch. It was a rig he built himself – that was kind of Beck’s specialty. Jumping the rack was a stunt that I’d been working on for weeks. I knew I wanted to do it because of all the kids who hadn’t done it before. And I was gonna nail it, and the whole school – no, the whole school district – no… the whole city was gonna talk about it when it was done.

If you are feeling bad, don't jump to conclusions. Don't react to people or situations quickly. Sometimes it's best to let them sit and marinate for awhile. If you've given it a week or so and you still feel like this is an issue that needs to be addressed, go ahead and address it then. You'll have a better handle on your emotions and hopefully you will have used that time to articulate specifically what the issue is so when you communicate with someone about it, you can be better understood.

It started on September 11,2001. Like so many of us, Bruder turned his attention to the Middle East after the attacks to ask why something like that could happen. He understood that if such an event could happen once, it could happen again, and for the lives of his own daughters he wanted to find a way to prevent that. In the course of trying to figure out what he could do, he made a remarkable discovery that went much deeper than protecting his daughters or even the prevention of terrorism in the United States. In America, he realized, the vast majority of young people wake up in the morning with a feeling that there is opportunity for them in the future. Regardless of the economy, most young boys and girls who grow up in the United States have an inherent sense of optimism that they can achieve something if they want to—to live the American Dream. A young boy growing up in Gaza or a young girl living in Yemen does not wake up every day with the same feeling. Even if they have the desire, the same optimism is not there. It is too easy to point and say that the culture is different. That is not actionable. The real reason is that there is a distinct lack of institutions to give young people in the region a sense of optimism for their future. A college education in Jordan, for example, may offer some social status, but it doesn't necessarily prepare a young adult for what lies ahead. The education system, in cases like this, perpetuates a systemic cultural pessimism. Bruder realized the problems we face with terrorism in the West have less to do with what young boys and girls in the Middle East think about America and more to do with what they think about themselves and their own vision of the future. Through the EFE Foundation, Bruder is setting up programs across the Middle East to teach young adults the hard and soft skills that will help them feel like they have opportunity in life. To feel like they can be in control of their own destinies. Bruder is using the EFE Foundation to share his WHY on a global scale—to teach people that there is always an alternative to the path they think they are on. The Education for Employment Foundation is not an American charity hoping to do good in faraway lands. It is a global movement. Each EFE operation runs independently, with locals making up the majority of their local boards. Local leaders take personal responsibility to give young men and women that feeling of opportunity by giving them the skills, knowledge and, most importantly, the confidence to choose an alternative path for themselves. In Yemen, children can expect to receive nine years of education. This is one of the lowest rates in the world. In the United States, children can expect sixteen years. Inspired by Bruder, Aleryani sees such an amazing opportunity for young men and women to change their perspective and take greater control of their own future. He set out to find capital to jump-start his EFE operation in Sana'a, Yemen's capital, and in one week was able to raise $50,000. The speed at which he raised that amount is pretty good even by our philanthropic standards. But this is Yemen, and Yemen has no culture of philanthropy, making his achievement that much more remarkable. Yemen is also one of the poorest nations in the region. But when you tell people WHY you're doing what you're doing, remarkable things happen. Across the region, everyone involved in EFE believes that they can help teach their brothers and sisters and sons and daughters the skills that will help them change path that they think they are on. They are working to help the youth across the region believe that their future is bright and full of opportunity. And they don't do it for Bruder, they do it for themselves. That's the reason EFE will change the world.

I met with Chad Logan a few days after our first get-together. I told him that I would explain my point of view and then let him decide whether he wanted to work with me on strategy. I said: I think you have a lot of ambition, but you don’t have a strategy. I don’t think it would be useful, right now, to work with your managers on strategies for meeting the 20/20 goal. What I would advise is that you first work to discover the very most promising opportunities for the business. Those opportunities may be internal, fixing bottlenecks and constraints in the way people work, or external. To do this, you should probably pull together a small team of people and take a month to do a review of who your buyers are, who you compete with, and what opportunities exist. It’s normally a good idea to look very closely at what is changing in your business, where you might get a jump on the competition. You should open things up so there are as many useful bits of information on the table as possible. If you want, I can help you structure some of this process and, maybe, help you ask some of the right questions. The end result will be a strategy that is aimed at channeling energy into what seem to be one or two of the most attractive opportunities, where it looks like you can make major inroads or breakthroughs. I can’t tell you in advance how large such opportunities are, or where they may be. I can’t tell you in advance how fast revenues will grow. Perhaps you will want to add new services, or cut back on doing certain things that don’t make a profit. Perhaps you will find it more promising to focus on grabbing the graphics work that currently goes in-house, rather than to competitors. But, in the end, you should have a very short list of the most important things for the company to do. Then you will have a basis for moving forward. That is what I would do were I in your shoes. If you continue down the road you are on you will be counting on motivation to move the company forward. I cannot honestly recommend that as a way forward because business competition is not just a battle of strength and wills; it is also a competition over insights and competencies. My judgment is that motivation, by itself, will not give this company enough of an edge to achieve your goals. Chad Logan thanked me and, a week later, retained someone else to help him. The new consultant took Logan and his department managers through an exercise he called “Visioning.” The gist of it was the question “How big do you think this company can be?” In the morning they stretched their aspirations from “bigger” to “very much bigger.” Then, in the afternoon, the facilitator challenged them to an even grander vision: “Think twice as big as that,” he pressed. Logan

She loved the order and the certainty the Church gave her life, arranging the seasons for her, the weeks and the days, guiding her philosophies and her sorrows. She loved the hymns. She loved the prayers. She loved the way the Church--the priests and the Brothers and the nuns, as well as the handy threat of eternal damnation--ordered her disorderly children. But holiness bored her. She liked chaos, busyness, bustling. She liked a household strewn with clothes and dust and magazines and books, jump ropes, baseball bats, milk bottles. She like the sight and smell of overflowing ashtrays, of a man who's had a few drinks, of tabletops crowded with cloudy glasses. She loved falling into an unmade bed at the end of the long day, falling in beside her snoring husband--with maybe a child or two snagged in the covers--and never reaching, because sleep overtook her, the part of the Hail Mary that said: Now and at the hour of our death.

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

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

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

One of the things Clovis had been most afraid of was being forced to ride. He had seen the horses in the stables, and they looked large and twitchy. If Sir Aubrey put him in the saddle, Clovis meant to confess straightaway and take the money Finn had given him to run away to his foster mother. But the week after he arrived at Westwood, Sir Aubrey asked Clovis to come into the library because he had some bad news for him. “Now I want you to be brave about this, my boy. I want you to take this like a man and a Taverner.” Clovis’s heart began to thump. Could someone have died--Maia perhaps, or his foster mother--and if so, how did Sir Aubrey know? Or was it just that he had been found out?” “I won’t hide from you the fact that the Basher--your aunt Joan, I mean--disagrees with me. She was all ready to teach you. She had picked out a fine mettlesome filly to start you on; nothing sluggish or second rate. A real Thoroughbred. You’d be going over jumps in a couple of weeks. But I’m afraid I cannot allow it.” “Can’t allow what, sir?” asked Clovis. “Can’t allow you to ride. Can’t allow you to go on a horse. You can imagine what it cost me to come to this decision; the Taverner children have always been up in the saddle from when they were two years old. But after Dudley’s terrible accident…” Tears came into Sir Aubrey’s eyes. He turned away. “If there was anyone else to inherit Westwood, I would let you take your chance, but with Bernard and Dudley both gone…” He pressed Clovis’s shoulder. “You’re taking this very well, my boy. Very well indeed. You’re taking it like a man. I confess I expected arguments, even tantrums.” “Well, it is a disappointment,” said Clovis, wondering whether to break down and cry, a thing all actors learn to do at the drop of a hat. But in the end he just gave a brave gulp instead. “I had, of course, been looking forward…” He looked out of the window to where the Basher, mounted on a bruising chestnut, was galloping across a field. “But I do understand. One must always think of Westwood.

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.

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.

If you are easily upset, don’t continue year after year that way. If you allow little things like long lines, the weather, a grumpy salesman, or an inconsiderate receptionist to steal your joy, draw a line in the sand. Say, “You know what? That’s it. I’m not giving away my power anymore. I’m staying calm, cool, and collected. David J. Pollay, author of The Law of the Garbage Truck, was in a New York City taxicab when a car jumped out from a parking place right in front of it. His cabbie had to slam on the brakes, the car skidded, and the tires squealed, but the taxi stopped an inch from the other car. The driver of the other car whipped his head around, and honked and screamed in anger. But David was surprised when his cabbie just smiled real big, and waved at him. David said, “That man almost totaled your cab and sent us to the hospital. I can’t believe you didn’t yell back at him. How were you able to keep your cool?” The cab driver’s response, which David calls, “The Law of the Garbage Truck,” was this: “Many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they look for a place to dump it. And if you let them, they’ll dump it on you. So when someone wants to dump on you, don’t take it personally. It doesn’t have anything to do with you. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Believe me, you’ll be happier.” Successful people don’t allow garbage trucks to unload on them. If somebody dumps a load on you, don’t be upset. Don’t be angry. Don’t be offended. If you make that mistake, you’ll end up carrying their loads around and eventually you’ll dump them on somebody else. Keep your lid on. Sometimes you may need to have a steel lid. These days, though, so many people are dumping out poison through criticism, bad news, and anger, you’ll need to keep that lid on tight. We can’t stop people from dumping their garbage, but by keeping our lids on, we can tell them to recycle instead!

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!

This day I remember well. It is the very first moment in my life when I saw desperation enacted by hate. I watched as the second plane flew into the second tower, the pit in my stomach plummeting to a place I have yet to recover. The devastation of those jumping, the visions of cement and debris falling from the sky like thunder. I remember not being able to reach my friends and coworkers, the fear paralyzing me as I imagined them fighting for their lives and the lives of countless others. I remember my cousin who was in the Pentagon who was narrowly spared that day. That day — like it did for so many — that changed me. Forever. And while we honor those lost and remember those who did such things, remember that it was everyone coming together that saved this nation. It was us standing beside one another regardless of politics or religion, race or gender, and no one cared about wealth or poverty, or anything else for that matter. In that moment America stood tall. Today we are completely undone … unraveled and our excuse is moot. I wish we could, as a nation, realize that 9/11 represented a multitude of things. Our freedom, our fear, our triumphant spirit to overcome tragedy and terrorism—foreign and domestic—and our ability to eliminate prejudice when confronting human decency. Today we remember the many lives lost, those still suffering, and those who bravely and courageously continue to do all they can to protect our freedom to speak out, to challenge oppressors, and to rise above the lunacy. New Yorkers are proof that communities of all colors, beliefs and socio economic statuses can come together in the face of adversity. I hope this country — state by state — can stop acting like children and instead act like human beings. That we can be worthy of the months and weeks and days that followed 9/11 when we rose to the occasion as a collective whole.

Misty having used such tacks when teaching her to walk like a girl. Four tacks for each heel, lightly taped in place so that the tips were just pressed against her flesh, her feet forced to walk on her toes as if in heels so that the points didn’t push through into her skin. Misty had done this for several weeks, until walking as if she were wearing heels became something Bitsy did without thinking. The training had been pure agony and led to many tears, but in the end it had been worth it, the heels she eventually stepped into feeling like an extension of her body. She could walk, run, skip, and jump in them without a problem. Misty…not so much. But then she hadn’t been trained with roofing tacks.

I can’t stop staring at the french fry oil, Dark and dirty, like reappearing cysts. I put potato slices inside cooked to boil, Six days a week, ten o’clock to six. I’d want to jump in the fryer so that I can end it all, But just like my wages, it’s much too small.

(Horses like boys…?) I had to remind myself that I gave up riding before I started eighth grade. I said that because I knew the same tired Jokes were going to roll in soon, about me riding horse-ie’s from the day I was like seven until then.’ ‘I don’t think I could ride now to save my life.’ Jenny said- ‘It’s just like riding a bike you never forget how too.’ ‘How would you know,’ I asked? Jenny said- ‘I still ride from time to time, I just got second place in a jumping competition two weeks ago.’ I whispered- ‘O-oh.’ (On the inside- I was crushed, thinking it okay for you to ride but I can’t. My horse died not long after, I stopped riding her, thinking I didn’t love her anymore. I didn’t want to stop.) I think if she starts making fun of me now, I would bust out crying. And if I cry then I’ll be a BABY! Yet it okay for her to cry to us over stupid boys or her time of the month drama. I could never clear the truth to her: that riding was my favorite thing in this whole wide world. It wasn’t about winning with me, no- it was about having my freedom, my happiness, and my relaxation. The way I could escape from all of them that put me down, back them. I loved it more than boys, more than friends, more than family even. I was the best I could be back then. I was strong then, now I am nothing but a week p*ssy that lets everyone crap on me. I can’t believe that I wanted this life. I loved to be alone in the barn, or out on the fields particularly in the late summer when everything is crunchy and golden, and the plants show off all their wonderful different colors, and it smells of hay, is what made my day complete, racing past all the trees, down the wooded trails, it was more than just jumping her at compassion. We had a bond- I loved brushing my horse down, braiding her main, and being her best friend, feeding her carrots sticks, I loved it all. I gave up my best friends for ones that I can’t always trust. Your horse’s always your trusting best friend. And if I am crying now, it’s not that I am sad, it’s that I am happy. I have to lie…! I am nothing- nothing, but a complete liar, a wide-ranging slut, and a total baby! #- hostage: (Galloping, Groping, Gulping)

I wouldn't want this to turn into a generic Asian hodgepodge, for example. Or a brand where the Korean part is no longer core to the business. Or the branding is offensive. Remember when Abercrombie and Fitch had all those offensive Asian T-shirts a few years back? I wouldn't want that to happen." Wyatt slurped his straw. "Jessie, sometimes you really overthink it all. For a company your size, the offer is more than fair. You'll have so much money, you can go invest it somewhere and retire on a secluded beach. These guys, Rich and Tommy, they have vision! They make magic happen with any business they acquire. Their Persian Eats cookbook based on their Netflix series has held the number one spot on the bestseller list for three months. The author is this fancy Culinary Institute of the Arts instructor. Dudley something; I forget his name, some English dude. Tommy, didn't you tell me he was chomping at the bit to do a splashy Seoul Sistas cookbook?" My whole body tensed. "We already have one coming out. And did you just say a White dude would be writing a Korean Seoul Sistas cookbook?" He backtracked in the most Wyatt-like way. "I never said that exactly. And I didn't say he was White." "With a name like Dudley, he's not exactly a sista." The silence in the room was palpable. Wyatt asked, "So no deal? Any smart business leader would jump at this opportunity." My God. Was he serious? "No deal." I looked at Daniel, pleading for any lifeline he could throw me to get me out of there. He stood from his chair. "Rich, Tommy, as always, it's been a pleasure working with you these last few weeks, but my contract ends now, at five P.M. And Wyatt, I'm respectfully declining your offer of full-time employment." Wyatt's mouth formed a perfect O. "But... why?" "I have a new client to counsel. Jessie Kim. And effective immediately, we'll be declining your offer and evaluating all of our options for selling or retaining her business." I stood and pushed the chair back with my leg. "Thank you so much for finding time to meet with me, and it was great meeting you, Rich and Tommy." Shooting a death stare at Wyatt, I continued, "As a smart business leader in a new and growing category, it's best for me now to consider my options and explore alternatives.

Our Dutch hostess—or rather, the woman we are hoping will host us once we show up on her doorstep—is known to everyone but me. And though I had been warned about Johanna Hoffman’s friendliness and large dogs, there is no way to be truly prepared for either. When the door to her canal house opens, three dogs that look as though they each weigh more than I do spill out, followed by a plump, bright-faced woman in a pink dress that matches the bows around each dog’s neck. When she sees Felicity, she screams. In spite of not having anything in her hands, I swear she somehow still drops a vase. She throws her arms around Felicity, squeezing her so hard she nearly lifts her off the ground. “Felicity Montague, I thought you were dead!” “Not dead,” Felicity says. One of the dogs tries to wedge itself between the two of them, tail wagging so furiously it makes a thumping drumbeat against the door frame. A second snuffles its nose against my palm, trying to flip my hand onto the top of its head in an encouragement to pet. “It’s been years. Years, Felicity, I haven’t heard from you in years.” She takes Felicity’s face in her hands and presses their foreheads together. “Hardly a word since you left! What on earth are you doing here? I can’t believe it!” She releases Felicity just long enough to turn to Monty and throw open her arms to him. “And Harold!” “Henry,” he corrects, the end coming out in a wheeze as she wraps him in a rib-crushing hug. The dog gives up nudging my hand and instead mashes its face into my thigh, leaving a trail of spittle on my trousers. “Of course, Henry!” She lets go of him, turns to me, and says with just as much enthusiasm, “And I don’t know who you are!” And then I too am being hugged. She smells of honey and lavender, which makes the embrace feel like being wrapped in a loaf of warm bread. “This is Adrian,” Felicity says. “Adrian!” Johanna cries. One of the dogs lets out a long woof in harmony and the others take up the call, an off-key, enthusiastic chorus. She releases me, then turns to Felicity again, but Felicity holds up a preemptive hand. “All right, that’s enough. No more hugs.” She brushes an astonishing amount of dog hair off the front of her skirt, then says brusquely, “It’s good to see you, Johanna.” In return, Johanna smacks her on the shoulder. “You tell me you’re going to Rabat with some scholar and then you never come back and I never hear a single word! Why didn’t you write? Come inside, come on, push the dogs out the way, they won’t bite.” As we follow her into the hallway and then the parlor, she’s speaking so fast I can hardly understand her. “Where are you staying? Wherever it is, cancel it; let me put you up here. Was your luggage sent somewhere? I can have one of my staff collect it. We have plenty of room, and I can make up the parlor for you, Harry—” “Henry,” Monty corrects, then corrects himself. “Monty, Jo, I’ve told you to call me Monty.” She waves that away. “I know but it always feels so terribly glib! You were nearly a lord! But I’m happy to set you up down here so you needn’t navigate the stairs on your leg—gosh, what have you done to it? Your lovely Percy isn’t here, is he? Though we’ll have to do something so the dogs don’t jump on you in the night. They usually sleep with Jan and me, but they get squirrely when we have company. One of Jan’s brokers from Antwerp stayed with us last week and he swears he locked the bedroom door, but somehow Seymour still jumped on top of him in the middle of the night. Poor man thought he was being murdered in his bed. Please sit down—the dogs will move if you crowd them.

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.

Beckett I expect her to argue. To resist this pull between us. But without a word she melts into my side. There’s no tenseness. No awkwardness. Just… comfort. Every moment with Elouise feels more and more like I’m home. And I feel like I should be surprised, but there’s just something about us that makes sense. Her body softens against me even more, and her breathing changes. And just like that, she’s asleep in my arms. I stare up at the ceiling of the tent, wondering what my next move should be. I didn’t really have a plan when I came back to Darling Lake last week. But now… fuck, now I can’t tell if I’m thinking with my brain or my dick. Am I just jumping to decisions about my future because I want to be buried into Elouise’s sweet little pussy?

How to prepare your spirit and body for a nap. STARTING POINTS TO JUMP-START YOUR CURIOSITY AND EXPERIMENTATION: We cannot wait for the perfect space or opportunity to rest. Rest now. In Part One: Rest!, I share the need for seeing rest as not an extra treat that we must run to but more of a lifelong, consistent, and meticulous love practice. We must snatch rest. We must believe we are worthy of rest. We don’t have to earn it. It is our birthright. It is one of our most ancient and primal needs. Our bodies are a site of liberation; therefore, wherever our bodies are, we can embody rest. This second tenet of The Nap Ministry is a mantra and a meditation. Productivity should not look like exhaustion. The concept of laziness is a tool of the oppressor. A large part of your unraveling from capitalism will include becoming less attached to the idea of productivity and more committed to the idea of rest as a portal to just be. Your early understanding of “productivity” is most likely tainted by the toxic socialization we all received growing up. It must be examined. Deprogramming our minds and hearts from our toxic brainwashing around naps and rest will increase our ability to craft a rest practice. Our slumber and opportunities for community care will be deeper because of our work in this area. Go slow and realize you have been brainwashed by a system that attaches your inherent worth to how much you can labor and produce. Grind culture is violence. Resist participating in it. This must be flexible so please also resist the desire to become rigid. I have gone months consistently experimenting with a rest practice daily or weekly. The next week I am caught up in an all-nighter to finish a deadline. We are moving in and out of worlds all the time so give beautiful grace to yourself. Start again