Stick Shift Quotes

Cherish your solitude. Take trains by yourself to places you have never been. Sleep out alone under the stars. Learn how to drive a stick shift. Go so far away that you stop being afraid of not coming back. Say no when you don’t want to do something. Say yes if your instincts are strong, even if everyone around you disagrees. Decide whether you want to be liked or admired. Decide if fitting in is more important than finding out what you’re doing here. Believe in kissing.

This isn't over. I won't give up on you." "I've given up on you," he said back, voice also soft. "Love fades. Mine has." I stared at him in disbelief. All this time, he'd never phrased it like that. His protests had always been about some greater good, about the remorse he felt over being a monster of how it had scarred him from love. I've given up on you. Love fades. Mine has. I backed up, the sting of those words hitting me as hard as if he'd slapped me. Something shifted in his features, like maybe he knew how much he'd hurt me. I didn't stick around to see. Instead, I pushed my way out of the aisle and ran out the doors in the back, afraid that if I stayed any longer, everyone in the church would see me cry.

All through first and second and third hour, Eleanor rubbed her palm. Nothing happened. How could it be possible that there were that many never ending all in one place? And were they always there, or did they just flip on wherever they felt like it? Because, if they were always there, how did she manage to turn doorknobs without fainting? Maybe this was why so many people said it felt better to drive a stick shift.

To make our communications more effective, we need to shift our thinking from "What information do I need to convey?" to "What questions do I want my audience to ask?

Wait, we can not break bread with you. You have taken the land which is rightfully ours. Years from now my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations. Your people will wear cardigans, and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the road sides, and you will play golf, and eat hot h'ors d'ourves. My people will have pain and degradation. Your people will have stick shifts. The gods of my tribe have spoken. They said do not trust the pilgrims, especially Sarah Miller. And for all of these reasons I have decided to scalp you and burn your village to the ground.

Stick them in the Blue Room. And no interruptions for the next couple of hours, please. My guest and I will be fucking. Two hours, Nora?” “At least,” she agreed. “Better make it three, Alfred.” Griffin shifted Nora higher on his shoulder and continued up the stairs. “This is going to be a long summer, isn’t it?” she asked. “Eight and a half inches long, if you’ll recall.

It's just as important to know when to drop something and shift direction as it is to know when to stick with something. When we quit the things that aren't working for us, we free up our willpower and perseverance for the things that really do matter.

While they waited, Ronan decided to finally take up the task of teaching Adam how to drive a stick shift. For several minutes, it seemed to be going well, as the BMW had an easy clutch, Ronan was brief and to the point with his instruction, and Adam was a quick study with no ego to get in the way. From a safe vantage point beside the building, Gansey and Noah huddled and watched as Adam began to make ever quicker circles around the parking lot. Every so often their hoots were audible through the open windows of the BMW. Then—it had to happen eventually—Adam stalled the car. It was a pretty magnificent beast, as far as stalls went, with lots of noise and death spasms on the part of the car. From the passenger seat, Ronan began to swear at Adam. It was a long, involved swear, using every forbidden word possible, often in compound-word form. As Adam stared at his lap, penitent, he mused that there was something musical about Ronan when he swore, a careful and loving precision to the way he fit the words together, a black-painted poetry. It was far less hateful sounding than when he didn’t swear. Ronan finished with, “For the love of . . . Parrish, take some care, this is not your mother’s 1971 Honda Civic.” Adam lifted his head and said, “They didn’t start making the Civic until ’73.” There was a flash of fangs from the passenger seat, but before Ronan truly had time to strike, they both heard Gansey call warmly, “Jane! I thought you’d never show up. Ronan is tutoring Adam in the ways of manual transmissions.” Blue, her hair pulled every which way by the wind, stuck her head in the driver’s side window. The scent of wildflowers accompanied her presence. As Adam catalogued the scent in the mental file of things that made Blue attractive, she said brightly, “Looks like it’s going well. Is that what that smell is?” Without replying, Ronan climbed out of the car and slammed the door. Noah appeared beside Blue. He looked joyful and adoring, like a Labrador retriever. Noah had decided almost immediately that he would do anything for Blue, a fact that would’ve needled Adam if it had been anyone other than Noah. Blue permitted Noah to pet the crazy tufts of her hair, something Adam would have also liked to do, but felt would mean something far different coming from him.

Colors shift like smoke within the branch beneath our feet. Sprites jump from leaf to leaf, leaving sprinklings of glittery dust in the air behind them. Droplets of water are strung like pearls from the silver strands of a spider’s web. Bluebottle glow-bugs stick to the leaves and branches, lighting up the night with their blue-green bodies. And high above us, clouds are draped like sashes of color across the sky. Amethyst, azure, jade.

To make our communications more effective, we need to shift our thinking from “What information do I need to convey?” to “What questions do I want my audience to ask?

Believe it or not, I didn’t plan to hit a witch with my car today.” He shifted the gear stick into first and accelerated down the street. “It was on the agenda for tomorrow.

Pretty sure. When we reached the car earlier, all I could think of was: Key. Ignition. Stick shift. Wheel. And then: No.” Dragos

She comes from fighters—her mom can drive a stick shift, smoke a cigarette, drink a soda, put on mascara, and deliver a smack to every member of the family without taking her eyes off the highway.

Hanks grin almost sent me into meltdown. The kind where I killed him, but first I would stick my tongue down his throat and ride him till he was blind.

And were they always there, or did they just flip on whenever they felt like it? Because, if they were always there, how did she manage to turn doorknobs without fainting? Maybe this was why so many people said it felt better to drive a stick shift.

Wasn’t that how people in other countries viewed all American people—with their innocence, their Disney, their inability to drive stick shift? With the way they were protected—the way I was protected—from so much of the “reality” that happened elsewhere?

We sealed my father's grave on a day of stark contrasts, of black against white, and it was the last time I'd ever find myself in a place of such extremes. Because in the months after the dirt fell on the coffin, my life began to shift to shades of gray, almost like the universe had taken a big stick and stirred up the whole scene at that cemetery, mixing up everything and repainting my world.

was slated for the afternoon shift with Nate, but hell if I was sticking to the schedule. I figured one of two things would happen the more time I spent with her. I’d learn she was annoying, a pain in the ass, or silly, and all of those would be great because I could get her out of my system.

I, Rooster John Byron, hereby place a curse Upon the Kennet and Avon Council, May they wander the land for ever, Never sleep twice in the same bed, Never drink water from the same well, And never cross the same river twice in a year. He who steps in my blood, may it stick to them Like hot oil. May it scorch them for life, And may the heat dry up their souls, And may they be filled with the melancholy Wine won't shift. And all their newborn babies Be born mangled, with the same marks, The same wounds of their fathers. Any uniform which brushes a single leaf of this wood Is cursed, and he who wears it this St George's Day, May he not see the next.

i think, then i pick, and then i stick. and nothing shifts me more from my view. no bad races, no bad sessions, no bad moods.

Grief sticks with you—it changes and shifts as you grow, but it never leaves you.

It was a standard shift, for one thing. Irene Tassenbaum of Manhattan hadn’t driven a standard since she had been Irene Cantora of Staten Island. It was also a stick shift,

there was something undeniably hot about a woman who could handle a stick shift.

That is my mom. The lady who made Christmas cookies every year and never figured out how to drive a stick shift. My mom is a Jedi.

True behavior change is identity change. You might start a habit because of motivation, but the only reason you’ll stick with one is that it becomes part of your identity. Anyone can convince themselves to visit the gym or eat healthy once or twice, but if you don’t shift the belief behind the behavior, then it is hard to stick with long-term changes. Improvements are only temporary until they become part of who you are.

It was she made me acquainted with love. She went by the peaceful name of Ruth I think, but I can't say for certain. Perhaps the name was Edith. She had a hole between her legs, oh not the bunghole I had always imagined, but a slit, and in this I put, or rather she put, my so-called virile member, not without difficulty, and I toiled and moiled until I discharged or gave up trying or was begged by her to stop. A mug's game in my opinion and tiring on top of that, in the long run. But I lent myself to it with a good enough grace, knowing it was love, for she had told me so. She bent over the couch, because of her rheumatism, and in I went from behind. It was the only position she could bear, because of her lumbago. It seemed all right to me, for I had seen dogs, and I was astonished when she confided that you could go about it differently. I wonder what she meant exactly. Perhaps after all she put me in her rectum. A matter of complete indifference to me, I needn't tell you. But is it true love, in the rectum? That's what bothers me sometimes. Have I never known true love, after all? She too was an eminently flat woman and she moved with short stiff steps, leaning on an ebony stick. Perhaps she too was a man, yet another of them. But in that case surely our testicles would have collided, while we writhed. Perhaps she held hers tight in her hand, on purpose to avoid it. She favoured voluminous tempestuous shifts and petticoats and other undergarments whose names I forget. They welled up all frothing and swishing and then, congress achieved, broke over us in slow cascades. And all I could see was her taut yellow nape which every now and then I set my teeth in, forgetting I had none, such is the power of instinct. We met in a rubbish dump, unlike any other, and yet they are all alike, rubbish dumps. I don't know what she was doing there. I was limply poking about in the garbage saying probably, for at that age I must still have been capable of general ideas, This is life. She had no time to lose, I had nothing to lose, I would have made love with a goat, to know what love was. She had a dainty flat, no, not dainty, it made you want to lie down in a corner and never get up again. I liked it. It was full of dainty furniture, under our desperate strokes the couch moved forward on its castors, the whole place fell about our ears, it was pandemonium. Our commerce was not without tenderness, with trembling hands she cut my toe-nails and I rubbed her rump with winter cream. This idyll was of short duration. Poor Edith, I hastened her end perhaps. Anyway it was she who started it, in the rubbish dump, when she laid her hand upon my fly. More precisely, I was bent double over a heap of muck, in the hope of finding something to disgust me for ever with eating, when she, undertaking me from behind, thrust her stick between my legs and began to titillate my privates. She gave me money after each session, to me who would have consented to know love, and probe it to the bottom, without charge. But she was an idealist. I would have preferred it seems to me an orifice less arid and roomy, that would have given me a higher opinion of love it seems to me. However. Twixt finger and thumb tis heaven in comparison. But love is no doubt above such contingencies. And not when you are comfortable, but when your frantic member casts about for a rubbing-place, and the unction of a little mucous membrane, and meeting with none does not beat in retreat, but retains its tumefaction, it is then no doubt that true love comes to pass, and wings away, high above the tight fit and the loose.

However, Dorian's acceptance of Andrew only went so far. And it was nowhere near enough to allow him this close to Ashaya. "What are you doing here?" Though SnowDancer and DarkRiver had free range over each other's territory, the wolves preferred to stick to the higher elevations. Andrew's eyes shifted over Dorian's shoulder. "I can smell her." "Don't." The younger male grinned. "She's all over you, too. Is she as sexy as she smells?" Dorian knew Andrew was deliberately jerking his chain. "Why don't you come closer and find out?" "Do I look stupid?" "You look like a wolf." Andrew bared his teeth. "I thought we were friends." "And I thought you got posted back to San Diego." The other man shrugged. "I came back to visit my baby sister, check up on that mate of hers." "She's fine," Dorian said, relaxing a little at Andrew's deliberately nonaggressive stance. "I've been keeping an eye on her." "Yeah, I know. She's always muttering about how she has three over protective morons for brothers now. Andrew snorted. "Wait till she has a baby girl. I can't exactly see Judd being any less feral.

His hands shift to my shoulders, and his fingers brush over the edge of my bandage. He pulls back with a puckered brow. “Are you hurt?” he asks. “No. It’s another tattoo. It’s healed, I just…wanted to keep it covered up.” “Can I see?” I nod, my throat tight. I pull my sleeve down and slip my shoulder out of it. He stares down at my shoulder for a second, and then runs his fingers over it. They rise and fall with my bones, which stick out farther than I’d like. When he touches me, I feel like everywhere his skin meets mine is changed by the connection. It sends a thrill through my stomach. Not just fear. Something else, too. A wanting. He peels the corner of the bandage away. His eyes roam over the symbol of Abnegation, and he smiles. “I have the same one,” he says, laughing. “On my back.” “Really? Can I see it?” He presses the bandage over the tattoo and pulls my shirt back over my shoulder. “Are you asking me to undress, Tris?” A nervous laugh gurgles from my throat. “Only…partially.

The flexibility of the human mind - its ability to flip frames, shift gestalts, or reconstruct events – is a wondrous talent. But it makes it difficult to predict how person will think and talk about a given situation. When I hit a wall with the stick, am I affecting the stick by moving it to the wall, or affecting the wall using the stick as an instrument?

The man has stick-up-his-ass-itis.

We had one car. It was a stick shift.” “But you couldn’t drive it?” I asked, tightening my hand that was on the steering wheel. “No, which meant I didn’t leave the house unless I was going somewhere within walking distance or my ex drove me.” “He didn’t try to teach you?” “He said I didn’t need to know how to drive it when he could take me anywhere I wanted to go.

Life has a strange rhythm. It takes a while to fully be aware of this. Decades. Centuries, even. It’s not a simple rhythm. But the rhythm is there. The tempo shifts and fluctuates; there are structures within structures, patterns within patterns. It’s baffling. Like when you first hear John Coltrane on the saxophone. But if you stick with it, the elements of familiarity become clear. The current rhythm is speeding up. I am approaching a crescendo. Everything is happening all at once. That is one of the patterns: when nothing is happening, nothing continues to happen, but after a while the lull becomes too much and the drums need to kick in. Something has to happen. Often that need comes from yourself. You make a phone call. You say, ‘I can’t do this life any more, I need to change.’ And one thing happens that you are in control of. And then another happens which you have no say over. Newton’s third law of motion. Actions create reactions. When things start to happen, other things start to happen. But sometimes it seems there is no explanation as to why the things are happening – why all the buses are coming along at once – why life’s moments of luck and pain arrive in clusters. All we can do is observe the pattern, the rhythm, and then live it.

He pulled back, leaving them both breathless, and then tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “I’ll follow you to the inn since it’s on my way home.” She nodded, her lips swollen from his kiss, her eyes a little glazed. “Are you okay to drive?” She smiled then looked down at his dick. “Well, if you can drive with a second stick shift, I think I can make it.” He threw his head back and laughed then let her get in her car.

I have something to show you." He sank down next to me and handed me a sketchbook. I opened it. And saw the mermaid. She was drawn in colored ink, exquisitely detailed; each scale had a little picture in it: a pyramid, a rocket, a peacock, a lamp. Her torso was patterened red, like a tattoo, like coral. She had a thin strand of seaweed around her neck, with a starfish holding on to the center. Her hair was a tumble of loose black curls. She had my face. I turned the page.And another and another. There she was fighting a creature that was half human, half octopus. Exploring a cave. Riding a shark. Laughing and petting a stingray that rested on her lap. "I'm calling her Cora Lia for the moment," Alex told me. "I thought about Corella, but it sounded like cheap dishware." "She's...amazing." "She's fierce. Fighting the Evil Sea-Dragon King and his minions." I traced the red tattoo on her chest. "This is beautiful." Alex reached into my sweater, pulled the loose neck of the T-shirt away from my shoulder. I didn't stop him. "It looks like coral to me." He touched me, then,the pad of his thumb tracing the outline of the scar. It felt strange, partly because of the difference in the tissue, but more because in the last few years, the only hands that had touched me there were mine. I set the book aside carefully. "Guess I don't see what you do." "That's too bad, because I see you perfectly." I curved myself into him. "Maybe you're exactly what I need." "Like there's any doubt?" He buried his face in my neck.I didn't stop him. "So." "So?" "We'll kill a few hours, watch the sunrise, have pancakes, and you'll drive home." "What?" I felt him smile against my skin. "I got you swimming with sharks. Next on the Conquer Your Fears list is driving a stick shift.Right?" "One thing at a time," I said. Then, "Oh. Do that again." In another story, the intrepid heroine would have gone running out and splashed in the surf, hypothermia be damned. She would have driven the Mustang home, booked a haircut, taken up stand-up comedy, and danced on the observation deck of the Empire State Building. But this was me, and I was moving at my own pace. Truth: My story started a hundred years ago. There's time.

I am in a car with Mr. Assai at the wheel. He pauses to let a cow cross the road and then manages to ease in and out of people and bicycles and rickshaws. I look at his hand gripping the stick shift. I have never learned to drive a vehicle though I have seen men driving on buses. I always like to see what people’s hands do while their eyes are on something else. When I carve, I must look at my subject, but every now and again, when I have done something so many times, I can look away while my hands continue working. I can look away and forget I am a slave to this piece of stone. Even if it is becoming a beautiful angel with outstretched wings. How can I love the stone and hate it at the same time? Because it is a piece of me. I know nothing else. How can the ox stand having the yoke put upon its neck day after day after day? Because it is all it has ever known. Nothing more, nothing less.

Manifestation and magnetic desire are useful for raising your awareness of what you want and focusing your attention on it, guiding your actions to make it happen. Patience and harmony will help ensure you stick with your goals and that they align with your deepest self. Finally, becoming aware of abundance and universal connection encourages you to think about your goals in the context of other people and the wider world; to consider your place in it and provide you with a powerful sense of purpose that will guide The Source, making you more resilient, compassionate and integrated in your thinking. This shift leads to an exponential increase in the consciousness of your own power.

This is insane. You realize that, right?” “Only if someone gets hurt.” “Someone always gets hurt, Hayes.” He said nothing as he slid his fingers in between mine, squeezing my hand. The intimacy of the gesture threw me. I had not held a man’s hand since Daniel’s, and Hayes’s felt foreign. Large, smooth, capable; the coolness of an unexpected ring. I shifted in my skirt, legs sticking to the leather cushion. I needed to get out of there, and yet I did not want it to end.

Imagine teaching a fifteen-year-old how to drive a car with manual transmission. First, you have to press down the clutch. Then you have to whisper a secret into one of the cup holders. In Diane’s case, this was easy, as she was not a very social or public person, and most any mundane thing in her life could be a secret. In Josh’s case this was hard, because for teenagers most every mundane thing in their lives is a secret that they do not like sharing in front of their parents. Then, after the clutch and the secret, the driver has to grab the stick shift, which is a splintered wood stake wedged into the dashboard, and shake it until something happens—anything really—and then simultaneously type a series of code numbers into a keyboard on the steering wheel. All this while sunglasses-wearing agents from a vague yet menacing government agency sit in a heavily tinted black sedan across the street taking pictures (and occasionally waving). This is a lot of pressure on a first-time driver.

By shifting your identity to align with the habits you’re working to adopt, you prepare yourself to live in a totally new reality by erasing the inner struggle of I’m doing X but I’m actually an impostor so it probably won’t last because it’s not really who I am.

The moment we walk into the suite, Tommy descends on us. “The Queen’s on the line. On Skype, Your Grace.” Anxiety rings in his voice like the ping of a tapped crystal glass. “She’s been waiting. She does’na like to be kept waiting.” I nod briskly. “Have David bring me a scotch.” “Oh, me too!” Henry pipes up. “He’ll have coffee,” I tell Tommy. And I think Henry sticks his tongue out at me behind my back. I head into the library and he follows, seeming marginally closer to sober—at least he’s walking straight and unassisted now. I sit behind the desk and open the laptop. On the screen, my grandmother looks back at me, wearing a pale pink robe, hair in rollers and a hairnet, gray eyes piercing, her expression as friendly as the grim reaper’s. This should be fun. “Nicholas.” She greets me without emotion. “Grandmother,” I return, just as flat. “Granny!” Henry calls, like a child, coming around the desk into view. Then he proceeds to hug the computer and kiss the screen. “Mwah! Mwah!” “Henry, oh, Hen—” My grandmother swats the air with her hands, like he’s actually there kissing her. And I do my damnedest not to laugh at them. “Mwah!” “Henry! Remember yourself! My gracious!” “Mmmmmwah!” He perches, grinning like a fool, on the arm of my chair, forcing me to shift over. “I’m sorry, Grandmother—it’s just so good to see you

She walked around the edge of the table to position her next shot. As she pulled her cue back she was confident that she would only need one more shot after this. But as she started her forward motion, Ben leaned over. "Look at this picture," he said softly. "A long stick, hard balls, you bent over the table..." She missed.

Samuel looked at Chief WalksAlong, at all the Tribal Cops, at Lester. He shifted the ball from his left hip to his right. He spun the ball in his hands, felt the leather against his fingertips, and closed his eyes. “What the hell are you doing?” the Chief asked. With his eyes still closed, Samuel drove to the basket, around his defenders, and pulled up for a short jumper. The ball rotated beautifully. Years later, Lester still swore that ball stopped in midair, just spun there like it was on a stick, like the ball wanted to make sure everyone noticed its beauty. “That shot was vain,” Lester said. “That shot was the best story I ever told.” Samuel said.

I smile at my friends, but Mer and Rashmi and Josh are distracted, arguing about something that happened over dinner. St. Clair sees me and smiles back. "Good?" I nod.He looks pleased and ducks into the row after me. I always sit four rows up from the center, and we have perfectseats tonight.The chairs are classic red. The movie begins,and the title screen flashes up. "Ugh,we have to sit through the credits?" Rashmi asks. They roll first,like in all old films. I read them happily. I love credits. I love everything about movies. The theater is dark except for the flicker of blacks and whites and grays on-screen. Clark Gable pretends to sleep and places his hand in the center of an empty bus seat. After a moment of irritation,Claudette Colbert gingerly plucks it aside and sits down. Gable smiles to himself,and St. Clair laughs. It's odd,but I keep finding myself distracted. By the white of his teeth through the darkness.By a wavy bit of his hair that sticks straight out to the side. By the soft aroma of his laundry detergent. He nudges me to silently offer the armrest,but I decline and he takes it.His arm is close to mine,slightly elevated. I glance at his hands.Mine are tiny compared to his large,knuckly boy hands. And,suddenly,I want to touch him. Not a push,or a shove,or even a friendly hug. I want to feel the creases in his skin,connect his freckles with invisible lines,brush my fingers across the inside of his wrist. He shifts. I have the strangest feeling that he's as aware of me as I am of him. I can't concentrate. The characters on the screen are squabbling, but for the life of me, I don't know what about. How long have I not been paying attention? St. Clair coughs and shifts again. His leg brushes against mine.It stays there. I'm paralyzed. I should move it; it feels too unnatural.How can he not notice his leg is touching my leg? From the corner of my eye,I see the profile of his chin and nose,and-oh,dear God-the curve of his lips. There.He glanced at me. I know he did. I bore my eyes into the screen, trying my best to prove that I am Really Interested in this movie.St. Clair stiffens but doesn't move his leg.Is he holding his breath? I think he is.I'm holding mine. I exhale and cringe-it's so loud and unnatural. Again.Another glance. This time I turn, automatically,just as he's turning away. It's a dance,and now there's a feeling in the air like one of us should say something.Focus,Anna. Focus. "Do you like it?" I whisper. He pauses. "The film?" I'm thankful the shadows hide my blush. "I like it very much," he says. I risk a glance,and St. Clair stares back. Deeply.He has not looked at me like this before.I turn away first, then feel him turn a few beats later. I know he is smiling,and my heart races.

As a country, we take out loans and go to school. We take out loans and buy a car. We take out loans and buy a home. It's not always that we simply "want" these things. Rather, it's often the case that we use our obligations as confirmations that "We're doing something." If we have things to pay for, we need a job. If we have a job, we need a car. If we have such things, we have a life, albeit an ordinary and monotonous life, but a life no less. If we have debt, we have a goal-- we have a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Debt narrows our options. It gives us a good reason to stick it out at a job, sink into sofas, and savor the comforts of the status quo. Debt is sought so we have a game to play, a battle to fight, a mythology to live out. It gives us a script to read, rules to abide by, instructions to follow. And when we see someone who doesn't play by our rules-- someone who's spurned the comforts of hearth and home-- we shift in our chairs and call him or her crazy. We feel a fury for the hobo and the hitchhiker, the hippie and gypsy, the vagrant and nomad-- not because we have any reason to believe these people will do us any harm, but because they make us feel uncomfortable.They remind us of the inner longings we've squelched, the hero or heroine we've buried beneath a houseful of junk, the spirit we've exorcised out of ourselves so we could remain with our feet on the ground, stable and secure.

Okay.First things first. Three things you don't want me to know about you." "What?" I gaped at him. "You're the one who says we don't know each other.So let's cut to the chase." Oh,but this was too easy: 1. I am wearing my oldest, ugliest underwear. 2.I think your girlfriend is evil and should be destroyed. 3.I am a lying, larcenous creature who talks to dead people and thinks she should be your girlfriend once the aforementioned one is out of the picture. I figured that was just about everything. "I don't think so-" "Doesn't have to be embarrassing or major," Alex interrupted me, "but it has to be something that costs a little to share." When I opened my mouth to object again, he pointed a long finger at the center of my chest. "You opened the box,Pandora.So sit." There was a funny-shaped velour chair near my knees. I sat. The chair promptly molded itself to my butt. I assumed that meant it was expensive, and not dangerous. Alex flopped onto the bed,settling on his side with his elbow bent and his head propped on his hand. "Can't you go first?" I asked. "You opened the box..." "Okay,okay. I'm thinking." He gave me about thirty seconds. Then, "Time." I took a breath. "I'm on full scholarship to Willing." One thing Truth or Dare has taught me is that you can't be too proud and still expect to get anything valuable out of the process. "Next." "I'm terrified of a lot things, including lightning, driving a stick shift, and swimming in the ocean." His expression didn't change at all. He just took in my answers. "Last one." "I am not telling you about my underwear," I muttered. He laughed. "I am sorry to hear that. Not even the color?" I wanted to scowl. I couldn't. "No.But I will tell you that I like anchovies on my pizza." "That's supposed to be consolation for withholding lingeries info?" "Not my concern.But you tell me-is it something you would broadcast around the lunchroom?" "Probably not," he agreed. "Didn't think so." I settled back more deeply into my chair. It didn't escape my notice that, yet again, I was feeling very relaxed around this boy. Yet again, it didn't make me especially happy. "Your turn." I thought about my promise to Frankie. I quietly hoped Alex would tell me something to make me like him even a little less. He was ready. "I cried so much during my first time at camp that my parents had to come get me four days early." I never went to camp. It always seemed a little bit idyllic to me. "How old were you?" "Six.Why?" "Why?" I imagined a very small Alex in a Spider-Man shirt, cuddling the threadbare bunny now sitting on the shelf over his computer. I sighed. "Oh,no reason. Next." "I hated Titanic, The Notebook, and Twilight." "What did you think of Ten Things I Hate About You?" "Hey," he snapped. "I didn't ask questions during your turn." "No,you didn't," I agreed pleasantly. "Anser,please." "Fine.I liked Ten Things. Satisfied?" No,actually. "Alex," I said sadly, "either you are mind-bogglingly clueless about what I wouldn't want to know, or your next revelation is going to be that you have an unpleasant reaction to kryptonite." He was looking at me like I'd spoken Swahili. "What are you talking about?" Just call me Lois. I shook my head. "Never mind. Carry on." "I have been known to dance in front of the mirror-" he cringed a little- "to 'Thriller.'" And there it was. Alex now knew that I was a penniless coward with a penchant for stinky fish.I knew he was officially adorable. He pushed himself up off his elbow and swung his legs around until he was sitting on the edge of the bed. "And on that humiliating note, I will now make you translate bathroom words into French." He picked up a sheaf of papers from the floor. "I have these worksheets. They're great for the irregular verbs...

She lay on her back, her belly sticking up like a mountain on top of her little frame, and Jack couldn’t keep his hands off of it. While there was a time he couldn’t keep his hands off the rest of her—and she had no doubt they would be there again before long—right now it was the antics of his baby within her that occupied him thoroughly. He would let go a loud bellow when her entire abdomen shifted, caving in on one side and protruding enormously on the other. And he especially liked when it appeared a foot was sliding in a large lump up one side. She could actually doze while he occupied himself with her pregnancy. It brought to her mind what he was going to look like rolling a ball on the floor with their baby girl, bouncing her on his knee, twirling her around over his head. “We

The sun is high, the day hot, and she lays the dress out in the grass to dry, sinks onto the slope besides it in her shift. They sit, side by side in silence, one a ghost of the other. And she realizes, looking down, that this is all she has. A dress. A slip. A pair of stolen shoes. Restless, she takes up a stick and begins to draw absent patterns in the silt along the bank. But every stroke she makes dissolves, the change too quick to be the river's doing. She draws a line, watches it begin to wash away before she even finishes the mark. Tries to write her name, but her hand stills, pinned under the same rock that held her tongue. She carves a deeper line, gouges out the sand, but it makes no difference, soon that groove is gone, too, and an angry sob escapes her throat as she casts the stick away.

I guess you’ll just have to get used to having a police car outside the grocery store, the gym, and wherever it is you go for lunch with your friends,” Jack lectured. “And this goes without saying: you need to be careful. The police surveillance is a precautionary measure, but they can’t be everywhere. You should stick to familiar surroundings, and be vigilant and alert at all times.” “I got it. No walking through dark alleys while talking on my cell phone, no running at night with my iPod, no checking out suspicious noises in the basement.” “I seriously hope you’re not doing any of those things anyway.” “Of course not.” Jack pinned her with his gaze. She shifted against the counter. “Okay, maybe, sometimes, I’ve been known to listen to a Black Eyed Peas song or two while running at night. They get me moving after a long day at work.” Jack seemed wholly unimpressed with this excuse. “Well, you and the Peas better get used to running indoors on a treadmill.” Conscious of Wilkins’s presence, and the fact that he was watching her and Jack with what appeared to be amusement, Cameron bit back her retort. Thirty thousand hotel rooms in the city of Chicago and she picked the one that would lead her back to him.

That rarely happens in the other mental modes. In preacher mode, changing our minds is a mark of moral weakness; in scientist mode, it’s a sign of intellectual integrity. In prosecutor mode, allowing ourselves to be persuaded is admitting defeat; in scientist mode, it’s a step toward the truth. In politician mode, we flip-flop in response to carrots and sticks; in scientist mode, we shift in the face of sharper logic and stronger data.

Can you drive it?" "No. I can't drive a stick at all. It's why I took Andy's car and not one of yours." "Oh people, for goodness' sake...move over." Choo Co La Tah pushed past Jess to take the driver's seat. Curious about that, she slid over to make room for the ancient. Jess hesitated. "Do you know what you're doing?" Choo Co La Tah gave him a withering glare. "Not at all. But I figured smoeone needed to learn and no on else was volunteering. Step in and get situated. Time is of the essence." Abigail's heart pounded. "I hope he's joking about that." If not, it would be a very short trip. Ren changed into his crow form before he took flight. Jess and Sasha climbed in, then moved to the compartment behind the seat. A pall hung over all of them while Choo Co La Tah adjusted the seat and mirrors. By all means, please take your time. Not like they were all about to die or anything... She couldn't speak as she watched their enemies rapidly closing the distance between them. This was by far the scariest thing she'd seen. Unlike the wasps and scorpions, this horde could think and adapt. They even had opposable thumbs. Whole different ball game. Choo Co La Tah shifted into gear. Or at least he tried. The truck made a fierce grinding sound that caused jess to screw his face up as it lurched violently and shook like a dog coming in from the rain. "You sure you odn't want me to try?" Jess offered. Choo Co La Tah waved him away. "I'm a little rusty. Just give me a second to get used to it again." Abigail swallowed hard. "How long has it been?" Choo Co La Tah eashed off the clutch and they shuddred forward at the most impressive speed of two whole miles an hour. About the same speed as a limping turtle. "Hmm, probably sometime around nineteen hundred and..." They all waited with bated breath while he ground his way through more gears. With every shift, the engine audibly protested his skills. Silently, so did she. The truck was really moving along now. They reached a staggering fifteen miles an hour. At this rate, they might be able to overtake a loaded school bus... by tomorrow. Or at the very least, the day after that. "...must have been the summer of...hmm...let me think a moment. Fifty-three. Yes, that was it. 1953. The year they came out with color teles. It was a good year as I recall. Same year Bill Gates was born." The look on Jess's and Sasha's faces would have made her laugh if she wasn't every bit as horrified. Oh my God, who put him behind the wheel? Sasha visibly cringed as he saw how close their pursuers were to their bumper. "Should I get out and push?" Jess cursed under his breath as he saw them, too. "I'd get out and run at this point. I think you'd go faster." Choo Co La Tah took their comments in stride. "Now, now, gentlemen. All is well. See, I'm getting better." He finally made a gear without the truck spazzing or the gears grinding.

The Spine of the Snowman" On the moon, an old caretaker in faded clothes is holed up in his pressurized cabin. The fireplace is crackling, casting sparks onto the instrument panel. His eyes are flickering over the earth, looking for Illinois, looking for his hometown, Gnarled Heritage, until his sight is caught in its chimneys and frosted aerials. He thinks back on the jeweler's son who skated the pond behind his house, and the local supermarket with aisles that curved off like country roads. Yesterday the robot had been asking him about snowmen. He asked if they had minds. No, the caretaker said, but he'd seen one that had a raccoon burrowed up inside the head. "Most had a carrot nose, some coal, buttons, and twigs for arms, but others were more complex. Once they started to melt, things would rise up from inside the body. Maybe a gourd, which was an organ, or a long knobbed stick, which was the spine of the snowman." The robot shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

What’s wrong?” Lane ran his thumb over my cheek. “I wish… I just…” I frowned, trying to find the words I wanted. “I want to go home. I want to go check on Iggy. I want this to be a really bad and really long nightmare. I wish that instead of being in the truck, we were on our couch. You’d be sitting with your legs stretched out and I’d be lying on your lap. We could watch a movie. We’d be having a beer and nachos… I’d kill for a fucking beer right now.” I stopped my rambling to swallow down the lump forming in my throat. “It will be okay.” He pressed his lips to my forehead. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but someone will figure it out and they’ll find a way to fix it. We’re safe here for now.” He maneuvered over the shift stick settled himself beside me. I laid my head against his shoulder and closed my eyes as he smoothed my hair. “Lane?” “Hmmm?” I looked up at him and raised a hand to touch his cheek. My heart skipped, my lips brushed over his, and I took a deep breath. I remembered all those times I’d told him, but at the same time hadn’t told him. I decided that from now on, for whatever time we had left, he’d know. “I love you, Lane. Always have.” His smile melted every bone in my body. “I love you, Gabrielle. Always will.

Do not confuse destruction with power. They are opposites. Think of this: How long does it take to crush a butterfly with a stick?” He looked about. When no one spoke he continued. “I can tell you from experience: It takes no time at all. And yet what is required to create a butterfly? Nothing short of a magical transformation—a divine shifting of blood and sinew—a miraculous act that not one of us could ever dream of achieving! When you remember it this way, you can see that the act of swatting down a butterfly is a minor and inferior act—and one of great cowardice!—in comparison to honoring and sustaining it. So it is with all life.

citizens live almost exclusively underground. You can go outside for exercise and sunlight but only at very specific times in your schedule. You can’t miss your schedule. Every morning, you’re supposed to stick your right arm in this contraption in the wall. It tattoos the smooth inside of your forearm with your schedule for the day in a sickly purple ink. 7:00 — Breakfast. 7:30 — Kitchen Duties. 8:30 —Education Center, Room 17. And so on. The ink is indelible until 22:00 — Bathing. That’s when whatever keeps it water resistant breaks down and the whole schedule rinses away. The lights-out at 22:30 signals that everyone not on the night shift should be in bed.

They will eat him alive. On his current course, Henry will fail spectacularly.” My chest constricts so tight it feels like my bones may crack. Because she’s right. “He won’t.” “You don’t know that,” she swipes back. “I damn well do! I never would have abdicated otherwise.” “What?” “Don’t mistake me—I wouldn’t have married anyone but Olivia, and I would’ve waited a lifetime if I had to, until the laws were changed. But I didn’t because I knew in my heart and soul that Henry will not just be a good king, he will be better than I ever could’ve been.” For a moment I don’t breathe. I can’t. The shock of my brother’s words has knocked the air right out of my lungs. Granny’s too, if her whisper is any indication. “You truly believe that?” “Absolutely. And, frankly, I’m disheartened that you don’t.” “Henry has never been one to rise to the occasion,” she states plainly. “He’s never needed to,” my brother insists. “He’s never been asked—not once in his whole life. Until now. And he will not only rise to the occasion . . . he will soar beyond it.” The Queen’s voice is hushed, like she’s in prayer. “I want to believe that. More than I can say. Lend me a bit of your faith, Nicholas. Why are you so certain?” Nicholas’s voice is rough, tight with emotion. “Because . . . he’s just like Mum.” My eyes close when the words reach my ears. Burning and wet. There’s no greater compliment—not to me—not ever. But, Christ, look at me . . . it’s not even close to true. “He’s exactly like her. That way she had of knowing just what a person needed—whether it was strength or guidance, kindness or comfort or joy—and effortlessly giving it to them. The way people used to gravitate to her . . . at parties, the whole room would shift when she walked in . . . because everyone wanted to be nearer to her. She had a light, a talent, a gift—it doesn’t matter what it’s called—all that matters is that Henry has it too. He doesn’t see it in himself, but I do. I always have.” There’s a moment of quiet and I imagine Nicholas leaning in closer to the Queen. “The people would have followed me or Dad for the same reason they follow you—because we are dependable, solid. They trust our judgment; they know we would never let them down. But they will follow Henry because they love him. They’ll see in him their son, brother, best friend, and even if he mucks it up now, they will stick with him because they will want him to succeed. I would have been respected and admired, but Grandmother . . . he will be beloved. And if I have learned anything since the day Olivia came into my life, it’s that more than reasoning or duty, honor or tradition . . . love is stronger.

When I was a kid,'' she said. ``These sort of stories always start like this, don't they, `When I was a kid ...' Anyway. This is the bit where the girl suddenly says, `When I was a kid' and starts to unburden herself. We have got to that bit. When I was a kid I had this picture hanging over the foot of my bed ... What do you think of it so far?'' ``I like it. I think it's moving well. You're getting the bedroom interest in nice and early. We could probably do with some development with the picture.'' ``It was one of those pictures that children are supposed to like,'' she said, ``but don't. Full of endearing little animals doing endearing things, you know?'' ``I know. I was plagued with them too. Rabbits in waistcoats.'' ``Exactly. These rabbits were in fact on a raft, as were assorted rats and owls. There may even have been a reindeer.'' ``On the raft.'' ``On the raft. And a boy was sitting on the raft.'' ``Among the rabbits in waistcoats and the owls and the reindeer.'' ``Precisely there. A boy of the cheery gypsy ragamuffin variety.'' ``Ugh.'' ``The picture worried me, I must say. There was an otter swimming in front of the raft, and I used to lie awake at night worrying about this otter having to pull the raft, with all these wretched animals on it who shouldn't even be on a raft, and the otter had such a thin tail to pull it with I thought it must hurt pulling it all the time. Worried me. Not badly, but just vaguely, all the time. ``Then one day --- and remember I'd been looking at this picture every night for years --- I suddenly noticed that the raft had a sail. Never seen it before. The otter was fine, he was just swimming along.'' She shrugged. ``Good story?'' she said. ``Ends weakly,'' said Arthur, ``leaves the audience crying `Yes, but what of it?' Fine up till there, but needs a final sting before the credits.'' Fenchurch laughed and hugged her legs. ``It was just such a sudden revelation, years of almost unnoticed worry just dropping away, like taking off heavy weights, like black and white becoming colour, like a dry stick suddenly being watered. The sudden shift of perspective that says `Put away your worries, the world is a good and perfect place. It is in fact very easy.

The child shifted and stretched, then at last her eyelids fluttered open. She had kicked off the blanket in the night and Helen felt a small smile come as she looked at the girl, buried in the nightgown that was three times too big. “Look at you.” Helen let the smile spread a bit. “You’re like a person, but smaller.” She remembered how her brother Paul would tell her the same thing as he leaned against her head. Then Will would chime in as though to stick up for her, saying you had to hand it to short people—because they generally couldn’t reach “it” themselves. How strange, it seemed in that moment, that all their stories started here, that they’d had years of teasing and banter and laughter, then had grown and life took them to where they were now. All that laughter was gone.

For a moment, I thought I heard laughter, the click of one croquet ball striking another, a dog barking. I stared at the empty yard, trying hard to see what Great-grandfather saw, but nothing shifted, nothing changed. If the Tylers were playing croquet, they were visible to him and him alone. The only dog in sight was Binky. Running across the lawn to meet him, I took the stick he carried and threw it as hard as I could. It sailed across the sky, and Binky dashed after it. As the dog disappeared into the bushes, I looked up at the attic window and remembered the flash of white I’d seen the day I arrived--my first glimpse of Andrew. Funny to think I’d been scared. Nothing stirred in the attic now. No one watched, no one waited. Deep in my pocket, I touched the red bull’s-eye, warm as blood and twice as lucky. The marbles were mine for keeps. They were safe, and so was Andrew.

Jason, it’s a pleasure.” Instead of being in awe or “fangirling” over one of the best catchers in the country, my dad acts normal and doesn’t even mention the fact that Jason is a major league baseball player. “Going up north with my daughter?” “Yes, sir.” Jason sticks his hands in his back pockets and all I can focus on is the way his pecs press against the soft fabric of his shirt. “A-plus driver here in case you were wondering. No tickets, I enjoy a comfortable position of ten and two on the steering wheel, and I already established the rule in the car that it’s my playlist we’re listening to so there’s no fighting over music. Also, since it’s my off season, I took a siesta earlier today so I was fresh and alive for the drive tonight. I packed snacks, the tank is full, and there is water in reusable water bottles in the center console for each of us. Oh, and gum, in case I need something to chew if this one falls asleep.” He thumbs toward me. “I know how to use my fists if a bear comes near us, but I’m also not an idiot and know if it’s brown, hit the ground, if it’s black, fight that bastard back.” Oh my God, why is he so adorable? “I plan on teaching your daughter how to cook a proper meal this weekend, something she can make for you and your wife when you’re in town.” “Now this I like.” My dad chuckles. Chuckles. At Jason. I think I’m in an alternate universe. “I saw this great place that serves apparently the best pancakes in Illinois, so Sunday morning, I’d like to go there. I’d also like to hike, and when it comes to the sleeping arrangements, I was informed there are two bedrooms, and I plan on using one of them alone. No worries there.” Oh, I’m worried . . . that he plans on using the other one. “Well, looks like you’ve covered everything. This is a solid gentleman, Dottie.” I know. I really know. “Are you good? Am I allowed to leave now?” “I don’t know.” My dad scratches the side of his jaw. “Just from how charismatic this man is and his plans, I’m thinking I should take your place instead.” “I’m up for a bro weekend,” Jason says, his banter and decorum so easy. No wonder he’s loved so much. “Then I wouldn’t have to see the deep eye-roll your daughter gives me on a constant basis.” My dad leans in and says, “She gets that from me, but I will say this, I can’t possibly see myself eye-rolling with you. Do you have extra clothes packed for me?” “Do you mind sharing underwear with another man? Because I’m game.” My dad’s head falls back as he laughs. “I’ve never rubbed another man’s underwear on my junk, but never say never.” “Ohhh-kay, you two are done.” I reach up and press a kiss to my dad’s cheek. “We are leaving.” I take Jason by the arm and direct him back to the car. From over his shoulder, he mouths to my dad to call him, which my dad replies with a thumbs up. Ridiculous. Hilarious. When we’re saddled up in the car, I let out a long breath and shift my head to the side so I can look at him. Sincerely I say, “Sorry about that.” With the biggest smile on his face, his hand lands on my thigh. He gives it a good squeeze and says, “Don’t apologize, that was fucking awesome.

Every Monday and Friday night, leaving us with awful suppers to reheat, our mum didn’t work late shifts at the printworks. She went to an office in Shoreditch. And from there, by radio, by note, by telephone and letters, she exchanged messages with Miss Carter and Mrs. Henderson and Queenie and others like them on what she called ‘humanitarian war work’. She’d never met any of them in person. ‘I can’t tell you any more details. It’s secret work. How you know even this much is really quite beyond me,’ she admitted. ‘I worked most of it out myself,’ I told her. She might’ve hidden it from me all this time, but I wasn’t stupid. ‘Sounds like Sukie did too.’ ‘Your sister spied on me,’ Mum replied bitterly. ‘She stole paperwork, listened in to private conversations. She was very foolish to get caught up in something she knew nothing about.’ ‘She did know about it, though. What Hitler’s doing really got to her. She was desperate to do something about it. All that post from Devon? It wasn’t from Queenie. Those were letters from the lighthouse, written by Ephraim, who feels the same about the Jewish people as Sukie does.’ ‘It was stupid, impulsive behaviour,’ Mum argued, ‘of the sort your sister’s very good at.’ Yet to me she had missed a vital point. ‘You know Sukie wanted to help you, don’t you? She saw how ill you’d got over Dad. By standing in for you on this job, she was making sure you’d get some rest, like the doctor said you should.’ ‘I might’ve known you’d stick up for your sister,’ Mum remarked. ‘But it didn’t help me – it worried me sick!’ ‘It did help thirty-two refugees, though,’ I reminded her. ‘She was lucky she didn’t get arrested straight away.’ Mum went on as if she hadn’t heard me. ‘When I found out that night what she’d done, I was all for going after her, hauling her back and locking her in her bedroom, till this frightful war was over if I had to. But it was too late by then. She was already halfway to France.’ ‘You knew the night she disappeared?’ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ ‘And admit that I do undercover work and Sukie was doing it too?’ Mum cried. ‘Good grief, Olive, it’s secret business. It was too dangerous to tell you. There’s a war on, remember!’ ‘People always use that excuse,’ I muttered. It stunned me that Mum had known all this time. But then, hadn’t there been signs? The looks in our kitchen between her and Gloria, the refusal to talk about Sukie, the bundling us off out of the way – to here, the very place Sukie might, with any luck, show up. It was a clever way of making sure we knew the moment she set foot on British soil again.

done. Why did he stick around? Why would he force that encounter with you on the road, and that night at the diner . . .” He looked at Chris as though willing him to fill in the blanks, but Chris’s implacable eyes gave away nothing. “Wait,” Beck said, “I just remembered something. When Watkins came into the diner, I remember him looking surprised to see us there. But it was only me he was surprised to see, wasn’t it? He said he was there for a business . . . Ah,” he said with sudden enlightenment. “The payoff. He was meeting you there to get his money. “That was the night of Billy’s accident. I’d just come from the hospital. Our unscheduled meeting in the diner prevented you from conducting your transaction with Watkins. No wonder he was so angry that night on the road. He still hadn’t been paid. He was getting antsy. The heat was shifting from you onto him. In desperation, he went to Sayre and got Scott focused on the fratricide angle. That brought things to a head, so you arranged for a meeting with Watkins at the camp this morning.” Chris grinned. “I bet you aced law school, didn’t you? You’re actually very sharp. But, Beck, the only thing I would swear to under oath is that Slap Watkins came crashing through the door of the cabin, waving a knife and telling me he was going to kill his second Hoyle and how giddy he was at the prospect.” “I have no doubt that’s what happened, Chris. He just arrived earlier than you expected. He wanted to get the jump on you because he didn’t trust you. Justifiably. Even Watkins was smart enough to realize that you weren’t about to hand over money and let him walk away from that last meeting. He signed his own death warrant the minute he agreed to kill Danny.” “Please, Beck. Let’s not get sentimental over Slap. A double cross was his plan from the very beginning. Why do you think he left that matchbook in the cabin?” Beck mentally stepped back from himself and considered his options. He could leave now. Simply turn around and walk out. Go to Sayre. Live out the rest of his days loving her, and to hell with Chris and Huff, their treachery and corruption, to hell with their stinking, maiming, life-taking foundry. He was so damn weary of the struggle and the pretense. He longed to throw off this mantle of responsibility, to forget he ever knew the Hoyles and let the devil take them—if he would have them. That was what he wanted to do. Or he could stay and do what he had committed to do. As appealing as the former option was, the latter was preordained. “Slap Watkins didn’t plant the matchbook in the cabin, Chris.” He held Chris’s stare for several seconds, before adding, “I did.” • • • George

What does a playoff team look like?.., It looks like this... A playoff team is tired. They're in pain from a long season. They're frustrated about losses. But they're full of passion. Passion that will let them overcome the fatigue and the pain... A playoff team has to have energy. They have to be prepared to do whatever it takes. to battle one-on-one late in the 3rd period. To block shots. To play 2 or 3 overtime periods, i that's what it takes to win. They have to be the 1st to the puck, Clear the net. For the next 2 months, a playoff team has to bring that energy to the arena every night... It's not just the passion and the energy. It's not just physical conditioning. It's mental conditioning too. You have to stick to the game plan. You can't let fatigue or distractions get in the way of how you play. Some of you men have never been in a playoff game. Everyone will tell you it's a whole new season. Everyone will tell you it's intense. You have no. Fucking. Idea... All of you have trained yourself to leave everything behind when you step on the ice. And that's what you have to do now... You have to make the mind shift that this is a new season. The only that matters now is what we can control -- being ready for the next game... You have to have confidence in yourself. And n your teammates... Some of you guys haven't been playing together that long. But I've seen the teamwork you all bring. The work ethic. I've seen the relationships and the chemistry develop. You have to have trust in each other... and that means being trustworthy. Being there for each other. For the team... coaching staff. Trust in the game plan. Trust in the preparation... I ave trust in you. We can do this.

Taking quick looks behind him on the trail, Lew Basnight was apt to see things that weren’t necessarily there. Mounted figure in a black duster and hat, always still, turned sidewise in the hard, sunlit distance, horse bent to the barren ground. No real beam of attention, if anything a withdrawal into its own lopsided star-shaped silhouette, as if that were all it had ever aspired to. It did not take long to convince himself that the presence behind him now, always just out of eyeball range, belonged to one and the same subject, the notorious dynamiter of the San Juans known as the Kieselguhr Kid. The Kid happened to be of prime interest to White City Investigations. Just around the time Lew was stepping off the train at the Union Station in Denver, and the troubles up in the Coeur d’Alene were starting to bleed over everywhere in the mining country, where already hardly a day passed without an unscheduled dynamite blast in it someplace, the philosophy among larger, city-based detective agencies like Pinkerton’s and Thiel’s began to change, being as they now found themselves with far too much work on their hands. On the theory that they could look at their unsolved cases the way a banker might at instruments of debt, they began selling off to less-established and accordingly hungrier outfits like White City their higher-risk tickets, including that of the long-sought Kieselguhr Kid. It was the only name anybody seemed to know him by, “Kieselguhr” being a kind of fine clay, used to soak up nitroglycerine and stabilize it into dynamite. The Kid’s family had supposedly come over as refugees from Germany shortly after the reaction of 1849, settling at first near San Antonio, which the Kid-to-be, having developed a restlessness for higher ground, soon left, and then after a spell in the Sangre de Cristos, so it went, heading west again, the San Juans his dream, though not for the silver-mine money, nor the trouble he could get into, both of those, he was old enough by then to appreciate, easy enough to come by. No, it was for something else. Different tellers of the tale had different thoughts on what. “Don’t carry pistols, don’t own a shotgun nor a rifle—no, his trade-mark, what you’ll find him packing in those tooled holsters, is always these twin sticks of dynamite, with a dozen more—” “Couple dozen, in big bandoliers across his chest.” “Easy fellow to recognize, then.” “You’d think so, but no two eyewitnesses have ever agreed. It’s like all that blasting rattles it loose from everybody’s memory.” “But say, couldn’t even a slow hand just gun him before he could get a fuse lit?” “Wouldn’t bet on it. Got this clever wind-proof kind of striker rig on to each holster, like a safety match, so all’s he has to do’s draw, and the ‘sucker’s all lit and ready to throw.” “Fast fuses, too. Some boys down the Uncompahgre found out about that just last August, nothin left to bury but spurs and belt buckles. Even old Butch Cassidy and them’ll begin to coo like a barn full of pigeons whenever the Kid’s in the county.” Of course, nobody ever’d been sure about who was in Butch Cassidy’s gang either. No shortage of legendary deeds up here, but eyewitnesses could never swear beyond a doubt who in each case, exactly, had done which, and, more than fear of retaliation—it was as if physical appearance actually shifted, causing not only aliases to be inconsistently assigned but identity itself to change. Did something, something essential, happen to human personality above a certain removal from sea level? Many quoted Dr. Lombroso’s observation about how lowland folks tended to be placid and law-abiding while mountain country bred revolutionaries and outlaws. That was over in Italy, of course. Theorizers about the recently discovered subconscious mind, reluctant to leave out any variable that might seem helpful, couldn’t avoid the altitude, and the barometric pressure that went with it. This was spirit, after all.

Worst of all to be’s forms is the past perfect tense. You can recognize it by the word had—a red flag of danger in your story every time. For had describes not just a static state, but a static state in the past: “He had traveled far that day.” “I never had realized how much I loved her.” Each had makes your story jerk, because it jars your reader out of present action and throws him back into past history. Perhaps the jerk is only momentary, as when a lazy writer sticks in a bit of exposition: “John stared at her. He had always wondered why she took the attitude she did. Now, she left him no choice but to force the issue.” Here the jerk, the shift backward, is hardly noticeable. But throw in enough such, enough hads, and your story grinds to an aching, quaking halt. Forward movement stops. Your reader finds himself bogged down in history.

Zane’s eyes were still closed when Ty’s lips brushed his again. He slid a hand under Zane’s briefs and tugged at the elastic. “Mmm. What do you want?” Zane murmured, shifting on the cool wood floor to give Ty’s hand more access. Ty shook his head and grinned. “Just you,” he answered.

You are a very bad little girl,” he says as he shifts, pulling me down the table and placing me on my feet. “I know,” I respond with satisfaction. “How many lessons do I have to teach you before one sticks?” “Many. I’m a slow study.

How much does this thing cost?” Travis says, walking closer to it. Honestly, Travis is always like this. A negative nelly is what my mother would call him. He always has to ask the questions that nobody wants to answer because it ruins all the fun. “Well, that’s a hard question. Are you talking about the rental price or the price of all the smiles on everyone’s faces as they are having the time of their lives?” “The rental price.” “Well, here’s the thing−” I start, but he holds his hand up and looks to Tina. “$1599.00 plus deposit and taxes,” she says. “WHAT?” Travis exclaims. “No way! Forget it. This is a veto.” “You can’t use a veto for this!” I argue. “Well, I just did,” he says, shrugging. I can see he has already put the idea out of his mind, which is completely ridiculous. I mean, I know it is pretty expensive, but then I think of all the fun memories everyone will make together− and can you really put a price on that? “Travis, you’re not seeing the bigger picture here!” I argue. “We said a small party. A couple of friends, some food and wine. This,” he says, pointing to the obstacle course, “is not small.” “Who wants small for a thirtieth birthday party? I mean, you only turn thirty once−” From the look on Travis’ face I decide to switch tactics. “What about if we charge people?” “You’re crazy,” he says. “Not our guests, but the neighbours and stuff. Kind of like a carnival.” Actually, I just thought of that idea right here and now, but it’s not a bad one. Plus, it might be easier to have the neighbours agree to have it on the street if I let them join in the fun. “Or we could just stick to the regular plan,” Travis says and turns to Tina. “I’m sorry we wasted your time.” I already know the next part of this conversation is not going to go well. “I kind of already put the deposit down,” I say, trying to get an imaginary piece of dirt off my sweater. No one says anything and I am starting to feel pretty sorry for Tina because she looks beyond uncomfortable with the conversation. “What kind of deposit?” Travis says in a low tone. “The non-refundable kind,” I say, biting my lip. “How much was the deposit?” he asks, looking from me to Tina. Tina’s eyes are wide and she looks to me desperately, asking me to rescue her from this awkwardness. Honestly, if anyone needs a life jacket right now− it’s me. “Nimfy perfin,” I mumble. “What?” “Ninety percent,” I say, meeting his eyes. “The remaining ten percent is due on delivery.” “You really are crazy,” he says, shaking his head. “I don’t know what you are getting all worked up about,” I say. “I’m paying for it!” “Etty, this… thing… is your rent for the month!” “I’ll take extra shifts,” I say, shrugging. “I wanted to make sure Scott’s day was really special.” “It’s going to be special because he’s with his friends and family. You don’t need to do these things.” “Yes, I do!” I say. “It’s how I show people that I care about them.” “Write them a nice card,” Travis says slowly. “I knew you wouldn’t understand. You’re always the storm cloud that rains on my parade!” “No, I’m the voice of reason in a land of eternal sunshine and daisies,” he says, and turns to Tina. “Is there any way we can get her deposit back?” Tina is now fidgeting with her skirt. “No, I’m sorry, but−” “Don’t worry Tina, I don’t want my deposit back. What I want is my brother to have the best day ever with his friends and family on a hundred foot inflatable obstacle course,” I narrow my eyes at Travis while lifting my purse further up my shoulder. “Now, if you will excuse me, I have to go and start my first of twenty overtime shifts to pay for the best day of all of our lives.

The hall was blocked by a young patrol officer from the first shift who was bent in half, butt sticking up in the air, her flashlight swinging precariously close to her head as she dug green-colored photocopied paper out of a box. She straightened, shuffled the pages of announcements, meeting schedules, calendars—the normal office detritus.

he talked about shifting strategies like they were the middle part of metamorphosis. Apparently when a caterpillar makes a cocoon, the next thing it does is melt. Completely liquefies. And then all the little bits of what used to be caterpillar come back together as a moth or a butterfly or something. Finds a different way to assemble all the same pieces and make it something else.” “Sounds like the protomolecule.” “Huh. Yeah. Guess it kind of does.” Bobbie took another bite of her eggs, her gaze on the far wall. She was quiet for long enough that Naomi didn’t know if she’d come back. “But he meant something tactical?” Naomi said. “Yes. That pivoting your strategy was like that too. You go into a situation thinking about it a particular way, and then something changes. Then either you stick with the ideas you had before or you look at everything you have to work with and find a new shape. We’re in the find-a-new-shape part.

Two homeless men were asleep on picnic tables. I had become very good at not looking at unpleasant things. I could skip my eyes over any pool of vomit on the train platform, any broken junkie lurching toward the concrete, any woman who screamed at her crying baby, even the couples fighting at their tables at the restaurant, women crying into fettuccine, twirling their wedding bands - what being a fifty-one percenter had taught me was not to let any shock shake my composure. One of the homeless men, in the layers of colorless clothes, was faced away from me on his side. His pants were half down, a piece of shit-covered toilet paper sticking out of his ass crack like a surrender flag. One of his tennis shoes had fallen off and lay to the side of the table. I looked at him until I couldn’t anymore. The sun seemed pensive about setting, and instead of the usual transcendental buzz I got from a change of light, I noticed that the rats were shifting within the rocks. I’m beginning to worry, I said to the river. I checked my phone and walked back home.

I remember once in the Arctic, when we were attempting to cross the frozen North Atlantic in a small, open rigid inflatable boat (RIB), that I heard that voice very clearly. We had been caught out in a monster, sub-zero, gale-force 8 storm, 400 miles off the coast of Greenland - and we were struggling. We were reduced to a crawl as we battled up and down huge, freezing waves and crashing white water. It felt like only a matter of time before we would be capsized to our deaths in the black and icy sea during this longest of nights. Each time one of us handed over the control of the little boat to another crew member to do their shift at the wheel, we had an especially frightening few minutes as the new helmsman fought to become accustomed to the pitch and character of those freak waves. If ever we were going to be capsized, it was during these change-over times. We got lucky once. We were all thrown off our seats after the RIB had been tossed up and landed on the side of her tubes, only to topple back, by luck, the right way up. We then got lucky a second time in a similar incident. Instinct told me we wouldn’t get so lucky a third time. ‘No more mistakes. Helm this yourself,’ I felt the voice saying to me. As I prepared to hand over to Mick, my old buddy, something deep inside me kept repeating, ‘Just keep helming for a bit longer - see this team through the storm yourself.’ But we had a rota and I also knew we should stick to it. That was the rule. Yet the voice persisted. Eventually I shouted over the wind and spray to Mick that I was going to keep helming. ‘Trust me,’ I told him. Mick then helped me all through that night, pouring Red Bull down my throat as we got thrown left and right, fighting to cling on to the wheel and our seats. By dawn, the seas were easing and by the next evening we could see the distant coast of Iceland ahead. Finally. Afterwards, two of the crew said to me quietly that they had been so terrified to helm that they were praying someone else would do it. I had been exhausted, and logic had said to hand over, but instinct had told me I should keep steering. Deep down I knew that I had been beginning to master how to control the small boat in the chaos of the waves and ice - and that voice told me we might not get a third lucky escape. It was the right call - not an easy one, but a right one. Instinct doesn’t always tell us to choose the easier path, but it will guide you towards the right one.

Carry Grip Big Stick Combat is principally composed of three grips: 1) stick grip, in which the right hand grasps the end of the stick; 2) rifle grip, in which the right hand is at the base of the stick, palm down, while the left hand is near the middle of the stick, palm up; and 3) bat grip, in which both hands grip the weapon like a baseball bat, with the left hand over the right. Yet there is another grip, carry grip, that must be considered. Unless you need a cane in order to walk, you will typically carry the baseball bat, cane, or long stick in the middle, grasped by your right hand if you're right-handed. It is important to train to strike automatically and non-telegraphically from carry grip, especially if you are attacked by surprise. Cover and Hit You are holding the stick in carry grip, with the right hand at the balance point near the middle of the stick. An attacker swings with his right hand at your head. Bear in mind that his “punch” might be a beer bottle, a set of brass knuckles, or a knife, so it is best to crouch down to try to evade it completely. Raise up your left elbow, placing your left palm over your left ear. This is a multipurpose shield of your head. Swing the end of the weapon into the opponent's groin. Strike repeatedly into his groin and midsection as necessary. To follow up, grab the base of the stick with the left hand. You are now in rifle grip, only in reverse, with the right hand forward and the left at the pommel. If you slide the right hand down into bat grip you will be in the traditional right-over-left grip. Although these grips are the opposite of what I have taught in the book so far, I believe it is best not to shuffle the hands. I believe your first priority is not to lose your weapon! I refer to the right hand grip at the base of the weapon as “anchor grip,” because it is firm and permanently fixed. No matter how the left hand moves, the right always maintains a solid grip. I have rejected the grip shifting of other styles because I want to avoid at all costs losing the weapon, particularly under the stress of combat. Crotch Lift This technique is a natural follow-up to the preceding Cover and Hit. This can also be used as a follow-up to the low thrust, the very first technique in the book. The crotch lift can also be used in close-quarters grappling. Pass the stick between the opponent's legs, high up near his crotch. You may naturally find yourself in this position after a thrust to the groin. Reach around the opponent's back with your left hand and seize the end of the stick, palm up. Bend your knees and lift the opponent by straightening your legs and lifting with both arms. Arch your head and body to the right in order to dump him. If he falls with a leg still entangled, you can squeeze in on the weapon in a crushing technique.

The examples go on and on—victims typically don't see the knife that they are stabbed or cut with. Therefore, you must assume that he has a knife. Study his hands. Is one hand behind his back, held behind his leg, in a backpack, etc.? Be prepared for him to pull a concealed knife from his waistband or pocket. Just yesterday I struck up a conversation with a martial artist who told me combat was all about getting in close. NO! NO! NO! Part of assuming the knife means that you maintain distance whenever possible. The moment you close, the odds shift in favor of the guy with a knife. Even if you dish out serious punishment up close, if he clutches onto you it may be fatal when he draws a knife or ties you up, leaving you helpless as his buddies close in.

The care home is set back from the road. There are trees crowding out the whole front of the place. I stand outside on the pavement and wonder what I should do. There is a postman on the other side of the road, but other than that – no one. I inhale. Life has a strange rhythm. It takes a while to fully be aware of this. Decades. Centuries, even. It’s not a simple rhythm. But the rhythm is there. The tempo shifts and fluctuates; there are structures within structures, patterns within patterns. It’s baffling. Like when you first hear John Coltrane on the saxophone. But if you stick with it, the elements of familiarity become clear. The current rhythm is speeding up. I am approaching a crescendo. Everything is happening all at once. That is one of the patterns: when nothing is happening, nothing continues to happen, but after a while the lull becomes too much and the drums need to kick in. Something has to happen. Often that need comes from yourself. You make a phone call. tures within structures, patterns within patterns. It’s baffling. Like when you first hear John Coltrane on the saxophone. But if you stick with it, the elements of familiarity become clear. The current rhythm is speeding up. I am approaching a crescendo. Everything is happening all at once. That is one of the patterns: when nothing is happening, nothing continues to happen, but after a while the lull becomes too much and the drums need to kick in. Something has to happen. Often that need comes from yourself. You make a phone call. You say, ‘I can’t do this life any more, I need to change.’ And one thing happens that you are in control of. And then another happens which you have no say over. Newton’s third law of motion. Actions create reactions. When things start to happen, other things start to happen. But sometimes it seems there is no explanation as to why the things are happening – why all the buses are coming along at once – why life’s moments of luck and pain arrive in clusters. All we can do is observe the pattern, the rhythm, and then live it.

If I’ve shifted anything, it’s only because you, Mama, and Nai Nai lent me your strength.” As Mulan out a long breath, a spark leapt from one of the incense sticks. As it floated downward, it seemed inexplicably to multiply, over and over until there were hundreds of sparks floating in the air of the temple. “Baba,” Mulan whispered. The sparks rearranged themselves, clustering, expanding, and re-forming, until they became a dragon that soared through the air. Next to it, a fiery bird flapped its wings. They cavorted together, chasing each other in dizzying circles, until, suddenly, they scattered again into ash. The glowing sparks floated slowly to the ground and winked out one by one.

CALL TO LOVING ARMS “Can’t you hear it?” I didn’t need a car in London. But when we moved to America, my husband taught me to drive on the manual-shift car he’d bought second-hand at age 16. I struggled to learn when to change gears. I’d start in first and accelerate until the car was pleading for second. Focused on the road ahead, I’d miss the tell-tale sound. “Can’t you hear it?” Bryan would ask. I’d rush to switch from accelerator to clutch, grab the gear stick, pull it back, and slide it across so I could push it forward again into second. And so we’d go on, until the car was crying out for third. Perhaps, like me, you’re a follower of Jesus, and you want to keep your foot on the gas. There is so much that we Christians need to do, and so far we need to go to see people from every tribe and nation won for Christ. But after 12 years living in America, I’m convinced that in order to make progress we must change gears. Rather than just ramming our foot down, we must pull the gear stick back and do the hard work of repentance before shifting into second or third.

The Buryats and other Mongols believe that representation contains the power of the represented. Representation can ignite an object’s influence and must therefore be controlled in its extent and frequency… [T]hey describe their oppressors’ institutions of power soberly while fetishizing their shamanic deities, such as Hoimorin Högshin, through layers of material and verbal representations: figurines, accessories, clothing, poetic evocations, and actions of swaddling and cradling—and, specific to this discussion, by attributing to her the power to punish. As Taussig (1993:105) discusses… to represent something in detail is to display its power and authority… It is through a detailed representation of their own spiritual world that the Buryats have resisted their oppressors. The harsher the Buryats’ experience of oppression, the greater they seem to have made their supernatural entities. This makes sense if we stick to a rational calculation that the Buryats took the powers of their oppressors and attributed them to their own deities, making the latter correspondingly powerful. By attributing the characteristic of a dominant figure to Hoimorin Högshin, they shifted the power of the oppressor to their own supernatural world… By transferring the specific power of the colonial into their own deity, the Buryats also transform their own relationship with the colonial power. Hoimorin Högshin takes over the role of a brutal punisher, as if she were on the side of the oppressors, albeit temporarily. This temporarily renders the oppressors obsolete… [T]he Buryats fold Russian colonial power into Hoimorin Högshin and symbolically transform the Russians’ oppressive powers into their own. The Russian colonial power is limited to jails and police; it is not a part of the supernatural… By keeping the representation of their colonizers at a minimum, the Buryats prevent their “legitimation and hegemony in the form of a fetish” (Mbembe 1992:4), which protects them from internalizing the oppression and making it deeper, more subconscious, and more naturalized.

English and half Nigerian, Stacey had never set foot outside the United Kingdom. Her tight black hair was cut short and close to her head following the removal of her last weave. The smooth caramel skin suited the haircut well. Stacey’s work area was organised and clear. Anything not in the labelled trays was stacked in meticulous piles along the top edge of her desk. Not far behind was Detective Sergeant Bryant who mumbled a ‘Morning, Guv,’ as he glanced into The Bowl. His six foot frame looked immaculate, as though he had been dressed for Sunday school by his mother. Immediately the suit jacket landed on the back of his chair. By the end of the day his tie would have dropped a couple of floors, the top button of his shirt would be open and his shirt sleeves would be rolled up just below his elbows. She saw him glance at her desk, seeking evidence of a coffee mug. When he saw that she already had coffee he filled the mug labelled ‘World’s Best Taxi Driver’, a present from his nineteen-year-old daughter. His filing was not a system that anyone else understood but Kim had yet to request any piece of paper that was not in her hands within a few seconds. At the top of his desk was a framed picture of himself and his wife taken at their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. A picture of his daughter snuggled in his wallet. DS Kevin Dawson, the third member of her team, didn’t keep a photo of anyone special on his desk. Had he wanted to display a picture of the person for whom he felt most affection he would have been greeted by his own likeness throughout his working day. ‘Sorry I’m late, Guv,’ Dawson called as he slid into his seat opposite Wood and completed her team. He wasn’t officially late. The shift didn’t start until eight a.m. but she liked them all in early for a briefing, especially at the beginning of a new case. Kim didn’t like to stick to a roster and people who did lasted a very short time on her team. ‘Hey, Stacey, you gonna get me a coffee or what?’ Dawson asked, checking his mobile phone. ‘Of course, Kev, how’d yer like it: milk, two sugars and in yer lap?’ she asked sweetly, in her strong Black Country accent.

True behavior change is identity change. You might start a habit because of motivation, but the only reason you’ll stick with one is that it becomes part of your identity. Anyone can convince themselves to visit the gym or eat healthy once or twice, but if you don’t shift the belief behind the behavior, then it is hard to stick with long-term changes.

How do you know how you are if you wear the same things as before?” she asked. "You have to shake your life until you rid yourself of everything you thought you were. You will shiver during the transition and then replenish with non-identity. After that, you’ll see clearly. What does that mean? Well, you may have to move out of this country. Build your closet from the ground up. Befriend those you despise. Take a left. Trade different things, you see? One must refresh themselves. Stay current with the needs of our soul.” “The adventure isn’t real though... like, people don’t actually do those things. It’s very romantic, but it’s not true. People don’t actually do that.” “What in the world? Do you know your history? We are anything– anything!—we are... in medieval times, kings would behead their brothers. Rulers would commission the most talented artists in the world to paint their bathroom ceilings. People have defeated mammoths with sticks. People have loved. People have killed the innocent to hurt the guilty. Waited until dawn. Mocked death. Staged coup d'états. Go further in your emotions and convictions. Increase your tolerance for extremity. Life can stretch.” “I think you’re mad,” giggled Andrei, shifting his feet. “Like a comet,” she stared with a firm jaw.

Aren’t you proud that you know how to use a dial phone? That you lived a whole, full life without a digital device in your pocket? You remember who Gilligan is! You watched Fonzie jump the shark! You remember when coming in second place was still awesome. You know how to use a phone book and roll down a window manually. You probably drove a stick shift. As a kid, you played outside all day until dinner. You lived in a time when you could walk your loved ones all the way to the gate in an airport. The guy who sang your favorite song on the radio wasn’t also a model. You know what “Where’s the beef?” means and remember when everyone ate Hamburger Helper. You watched Jaws at the drive-in. We have seen a lot. We survived Aqua Net. We were the last generation of children to ride in a car without seat belts! And there’s nothing shameful in saying that.

He’s naked, and that stupidly sticks with me. Because he shifted to escape his captors, then shifted back to take that blow from Eero, he died without clothes. Not only is he dead because of me, his sacrifice means he’ll be stuck as a naked ghost forever.

In order to select a gear, the clutch pedal must be depressed - I don’t mean ‘not happy’, I mean pushed fully to the floor!

Because it is. Taxes are hard. Raising kids is hard. Learning to drive a stick shift, that’s hard. But love?” She did a slow twirl mid-air. “Love is easy.

He’s a freakn’ beast. Naomi watched in rapt fascination as player number forty-four scored yet another goal. Like an implacable freight train, he plowed through the opposition’s defense as if they didn’t exist, using his size, and surprising speed, to bowl them over. At the end of his shift, he went to sit his turn on the bench, but her fascination in the game didn’t waver. Her attention ended up snagged by player sixty-nine. Smaller in stature than the behemoth, he absorbed her just as completely with his feline grace as he twisted and moved around the floor. He almost danced as he ran, his stick held high and usually cradling the ball.

I’m their favorite target,” Clove confirmed. “It’s okay. I’m used to it.” “That doesn’t sound fair to me,” I said. “You should tell them where to stick it when they tell you things about … Bigfoot.” Clove shrugged. “I’m not really worried about it,” she said. “They’re my best friends. I mess with them, too.” “You mess with Thistle?” I was doubtful. “Only when I’m hungry for dirt,” Clove answered, causing me to knit my eyebrows. I had no idea what that meant. “Well, if you ever want to see inside the lighthouse – and I promise a Bigfoot-free experience – don’t hesitate to stop by,” I offered. “You’ll probably like it, and because you own your own business in town, I would welcome any insight you have for when I open the Dandridge.” “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Clove hedged, shifting from one foot to the other. “We probably shouldn’t hang out.

Testarossa Haiku kept shifting my gears bitch rode me like Ferrari my stick shift is sore

Kerry shifted her attention from Hardy to the rest of the still-milling crowd and tried to ignore the murmurs that included Cooper’s nickname for her and speculations on there being yet another McCrae family wedding. She needed to put an end to that before it even started. She clapped her hands, drawing everyone’s attention to her, then strode to the bar and hoisted herself right up on it, straight to her feet. She was no weakling herself. “Okay, listen up, everyone.” The noise abruptly wound down again, though not to the complete silence of before. “I’d like you to meet Cooper Jax, from Cameroo Downs cattle station, Northern Territory, Australia.” Heads swiveled and Cooper smiled, nodded several times, shifting his gaze around the room as he did, easily meeting everyone’s avidly curious gazes. But when that gaze went back to Kerry, despite the smile creasing his handsome face, the look in his eyes was anything but casual. Kerry ignored that. Or tried to. She shifted her attention back to the crowd. “I worked the Jax family’s station for close to a year, just before coming home for Logan’s wedding.” Blueberry Cove was small enough that everyone knew who Logan McCrae was. Not only due to his police chief status but, as it happened, the McCraes were also a founding family of the Cove. There wasn’t much the general populace didn’t know about the entire history of her family, past and present. “Long time for you,” came a voice from somewhere in the crowd. Kerry recognized the scratchy voice; Stokey Parker. A Rusty Puffin regular and one of Fergus’s cronies. “Heard tell you don’t stick in one place too long. Guess we know now what the draw was Down Under.” A chuckle went up in the crowd, and Kerry knew this wasn’t going as she’d planned. Not that she’d had much of a plan. “Thanks, Stokey. Australia is a beautiful country. I loved it there.” That much was sincere. All the same, she carefully kept from looking anywhere near Cooper’s direction. “But I’m home in the Cove now.” She expanded her gaze to encompass the full crowd again. “I appreciate that you’re all entertained by this…little surprise.” She swallowed hard and looked at Cooper as she added, “But there’s not going to be another McCrae wedding.

The span of the attention I have got from the audience is directly proportional to the time taken by them to understand it wholly. It simply means if I want to continue getting their attention, I would have to endlessly seek (till I reach the final point) them through my words without letting them down in any dilemma. It is so consistent an approach that I can’t get any extra time but the time they read the preceding. No matter what I must stick to the same pattern unless I want to divert their attention. The moment I divert them I am on the different track but parallel. The whole journey or communication or the conversation becomes worthful only if I can reach the destination without any distraction and distortion. Mindful I should be in switching the tracks because if not I end up putting or leaving them half way unaware of where to go on an unknown track. I must not lose them halfway, I keep that in my mind. It holds true when at first, audience is already impressed with your beginning gestures, conversational lines and an excellent entry. They then wait for something miraculous or magnificent to happen at the end. The entire process is a chain of a peculiar starting point, intimate intermediate lines and a particular ending dot. At last, from the top view, it seems that you have taken your audience via a lengthy diagonal roadway but it’s not. The whole theory is named as Parallel Perpendicular Process, where I use the oxymoron because you know where you want your audience to be at but you are improvised alongside the shifting of tracks whenever audience is one the verge of divergence and you apply your instinct immediately to converge. This is a cognitive advertising theory that can sell An Old Product to the respective customer A Joke to the laughable audience A First Impression to the corresponding prospects A New Product to the fresh market An Inspiring Speech to the potential crowd An Advertising to the target spectators The big benefit of this, if applied continuously, it gets from the start to the end on a go. While the disadvantage of it may go simultaneously, this theory fails when the audience is generic because it’s niche that this follows.

not drive a stick shift worth a damn.

If I asked you to come here again,” he said, “and let me be with you, would you?” There was no hesitation. “Yes.” “Even if things couldn’t be…normal…between us? Sexually speaking.” “Yes.” He frowned. “This is going to come out wrong….” “Which is fine, because I’ve already put my foot in it with you back at the clinic. We’ll just be even.” Rehv had to smile, but the expression didn’t stick. “I have to know…why. Why would you come back.” Ehlena lay back down against the pillows and, in a slow sweep, moved her hand up over the satin sheet that covered her stomach. “I have only one answer to that, but I don’t think it’s going to be what you want to hear.” The cold numbness, which was returning as the remnants of those orgasms he’d had dissipated, sped up its reclamation of his body. Please let it not be pity, he thought. “Tell me.” She was quiet for a long while, her stare shifting out toward the blinking, glowing view of Caldwell’s two halves. “You ask me why I would come back?” she said softly. “And the only answer I have is…how could I not.” Her eyes flipped to his. “It doesn’t make sense to me on some level, but then, feelings don’t make sense, do they? And they don’t have to. Tonight…you gave me things I not only haven’t had for a long time, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt.” She shook her head. “I wrapped up a body yesterday…a body of someone my own age, a body of someone who likely as not had headed out of his house the evening he was killed with no clue that it was his last night. I don’t know where this”—she gestured back and forth between them—“thing with us is going. Maybe it’s just a night or two. Maybe it’s a month. Maybe it’s longer than can be measured by a decade. All I know is, life is too short not to come back here and be with you like this again. Life is just too short, and I like being with you too much for me to give a crap about anything other than having another moment like this.” Rehvenge’s chest swelled as he stared at her. “Ehlena?” “Yeah?” “Don’t take this the wrong way.” She drew in a deep breath and he saw her bare shoulders tighten. “Okay. I’ll try not to.” “You keep showing up here? Being who you are?” There was a pause. “I’m going to fall in love with you.” -Rehv & Ehlena

Grilled Chicken Wings with Burnt-Scallion Barbeque Sauce ____________ Makes 12 pieces I am borderline obsessed with chicken wings. It’s the perfect food after a long work shift or on a chill day with your friends, crushin’ cheap American beers in the backyard. It’s food that allows you to let your guard down. After all, you’re eating food cooked on the bone with your hands and licking the sauce from your fingers in between chugs of ice-cold beer. Pure heaven. Note that the wings must be brined overnight. Brine 8 cups water ¼ cup kosher salt 1 tablespoon sorghum (see Resources) Wings 6 chicken wings, cut into tips and drumettes 3 tablespoons green peanut oil (see Resources) 1 tablespoon Husk BBQ Rub ¾ cup thinly sliced scallions (white and green in equal parts) ½ cup dry-roasted peanuts, preferably Virginia peanuts, chopped Sauce 10 scallions, trimmed 1 tablespoon peanut oil Kosher salt 1 cup Husk BBQ Sauce 1 tablespoon Bourbon Barrel Foods Bluegrass Soy Sauce (see Resources) 1 cup cilantro leaves Equipment 1 pound hickory chips Charcoal chimney starter 3 pounds hardwood charcoal Kettle grill For the brine: Combine the ingredients for the brine. I brine the wings using either a heavy-duty plastic bag that the wing tips can’t puncture or a Cryovac machine (you use a lot less brine this way). Place the wings in the brine and turn to cover well. Refrigerate overnight. Soak the wood chips in water for a minimum of 30 minutes but preferably overnight. For the sauce: Toss the scallions in the peanut oil and season with salt. Lay them out on the grill rack and heavily char them on one side, about 8 minutes (the charred side should be black). Remove them from the grill and cool for about 5 minutes. Clean the grill rack if necessary. Put the scallions and the remaining sauce ingredients in a blender and process until smooth, about 3 minutes. Set aside at room temperature. For the wings: Fill a chimney starter with 3 pounds hardwood charcoal, ignite the charcoal, and allow to burn until the coals are evenly lit and glowing. Distribute the coals in an even layer in the bottom of a kettle grill. Place the grill rack as close to the coals as possible. Drain the wings; discard the brine. Dry the wings with paper towels, toss in the peanut oil, and season with the BBQ rub. Place the wings in a single layer on the grill rack over the hot coals and grill until they don’t stick to the rack anymore, about 5 minutes. Turn the wings over and grill for 8 minutes more. Transfer the wings to a baking sheet. Drain the wood chips. Lift the rack from the grill and push the coals to one side. Place the wood chips on the coals and replace the rack. After about 2 minutes, place the wings in a single layer over the side of the grill where there are no coals. Place the lid on the grill, with the lid’s vents slightly open; the vents on the bottom of the grill should stay closed. Smoke the wings for 10 minutes. It’s important to monitor the airflow of the grill: keeping the lid’s vents slightly open allows a nice steady flow of subtle smoke. Remove the wings from the grill, toss them in the sauce, and place them on a platter or in a serving pan. Top with the chopped scallions and peanuts and serve.

Being married to your purpose gives you the legal right to birth it. Having goals is not enough. You must achieve them in order to have real success. Most people are content with just having goals, but it takes commitment (being married to your goals) in order to give birth to them. Most people don’t want to marry their goals; they simply want to date them. Dating requires no commitment and if things become difficult, you can call it quits and lose nothing. However, when you are married to something, you are committed to fulfilling its purpose, regardless of the cost. When people marry, they vow during marriage to stick through things “for better or for worse” meaning conditions don’t determine your commitment. Success takes faithfulness and dedication. With marriage, there is real intimacy, one common purpose, life-long commitment, quality and constant time together. The marriage to your vision requires the same thing to be successful. You must be willing to ignore distractions and do whatever is necessary to supply all that is needed to have a fulfilling marriage to your vision. While there is pain in giving birth, the joy of the newborn baby (vision) makes it worthwhile. While people say they want to give birth to their goals, many are afraid and unwilling to make a commitment to them. The birthing not only takes time, it also takes nurturing and caring after the birth or it will die. Just as people want the benefits of marriage (companionship and sex) without commitment, they also want the success of goal setting without the commitment. The same amount of passion you have for loving and being committed to your family, you should have for your vision and goals. Take this very moment to list your goals and write beside each one of them whether you are married to them versus dating them.

Are you going soon?' 'In seven minutes,' he said. 'Do you know what I'm thinking about now?' 'What?' 'I suddenly remembered how I used to catch pigeons as a kid. You know, we took this big wooden crate and sprinkled breadcrumbs under it and stood it on edge, and we propped up the opposite edge with a stick with about ten metres of string tied to it. Then we hid in the bushes or behind a bench, and when a pigeon wandered under the crate, we pulled the string. Then the crate fell on it.' 'That's right,' I said. 'We did the same.' 'And you remember, when the crate comes down, the pigeon starts trying to fly off and beats its wings against the sides, so the crate even jumps about?' 'I remember,' I said. Ivan didn't say anything else. In the meantime, it had turned quite cold. And it was harder to breathe--after every movement I wanted to catch my breath, as if I'd just run up a long flight of stairs. I began lifting the oxygen mask to my face to take a breath. 'And I remember how we used to make bombs with cartridge cases and the sulphur from matches. You stuff it in real tight, and there has to be a little hole in the side, and you put several matches in a row beside it . . .' 'Cosmonaut Grechka.' The bass voice in the receiver was the one that had woken me with abuse before the start of the flight. 'Make ready.' 'Yes, sir,' Ivan answered without enthusiasm. 'And then you tie them on with thread--insulating tape's better, because sometimes the thread comes loose. If you want to throw it out of the window, say from the seventh floor, so it explodes in midair, then you need four matches. And . . .' 'Stop that talking,' said the bass voice. ' Put on your oxygen mask.' 'Yes, sir. You don't strike the last one with the box, though, the best thing is to light it with a dog-end. Or else you might shift them away from the hole.' I heard nothing after that except the usual crackle of interference.

But first, please tell me your name. I really would like to know it.” “Sophia.” She looked up at him at last. “But my friends call me Sophie.” Sylvan smiled, being careful not to show his fangs this time. “I hope to someday call you that but I think I’d better stick to Sophia for now.” She sighed. “Look, I’m sorry I was nasty to you earlier. I know you’re not exactly to blame for what’s happened and you’re just doing what you do, making a genetic trade or whatever. It’s just that…my sister is my best friend and I can’t stand the thought of never seeing her again.” “You’ll still see her,” Sylvan objected. “Kindred brides are allowed to return to their home planet on most of the major holidays.” “Great, so I get to see her for Christmas and Thanksgiving? Two or three days out of the year? Thanks a lot!” Sophia leaned forward and looked at him. “Let me tell you something—Liv and I have never gone a whole day without speaking to each other in our lives. Even when we were babies my mom said we would cry and cry if you took one of us out of the room, away from the other one. And after our parents died, we got even closer. So please try to understand. I love her—she’s all I have left and I just can’t lose her like this.” Sylvan nodded gravely. “I can see your point. There is a similar bond between Baird and myself. We have the same father and we’ve saved each other’s lives many times in battle. I would be sad to only see him a few days of the year.” “So you get it.” She touched his knee lightly for emphasis and Sylvan felt his shaft harden in response. “How would you feel if I was threatening to take your brother and best friend away from you for basically the rest of his life?” she asked earnestly. “I wouldn’t like it.” Sylvan shifted uncomfortably, hoping she couldn’t see the evidence of her effect on him in his tight black uniform pants. “I guess the only way around your dilemma is for you to be claimed by a warrior yourself. Then you could see your sister every day on our ship.” “Oh…oh, no!

But feelings don’t shift unless they’re accepted exactly the way they are, neither more nor less. If they’re intense, they’re intense! Once they’re accepted, they’ll change into another form. But until then, they’ll stick around. Bonnie,

contexts. To make our communications more effective, we need to shift our thinking from “What information do I need to convey?” to “What questions do I want my audience to ask?

I drive into the high school parking lot with my mind more on my sister than on the road. My wheels screech to a stop when I almost hit a guy and girl on a motorcycle. I thought it was an empty parking space. “Watch it, bitch,” Carmen Sanchez, the girl on the back of the motorcycle, says as she flips me the finger. She obviously missed the Road Rage lecture in Driver’s Ed. “Sorry,” I say loudly so I can be heard over the roar of the motorcycle. “It didn’t look like anyone was in this spot.” Then I realize whose motorcycle I almost hit. The driver turns around. Angry dark eyes. Red and black bandana. I sink down into the driver’s seat as far as I can. “Oh, shit. It’s Alex Fuentes,” I say, wincing. “Jesus, Brit,” Sierra says, her voice low. “I’d like to live to see graduation. Get outta here before he decides to kill us both.” Alex is staring at me with his devil eyes while putting the kickstand down on his motorcycle. Is he going to confront me? I search for reverse, frantically moving the stick back and forth. Or course it’s no surprise my dad bought me a car with a stick shift without taking the time to teach me how to master driving the thing. Alex takes a step toward my car. My instincts tell me to abandon the car and flee, as if I was stuck on railroad tracks with a train heading straight for me. I glance at Sierra, who’s desperately searching through her purse for something. Is she kidding me? “I can’t get this damn car in reverse. I need help. What are you looking for?” I ask. “Like…nothing. I’m trying not to make eye contact with those Latino Bloods. Get a move on, will ya?” Sierra responds through gritted teeth. “Besides, I only know how to drive an automatic.” Finally grinding into reverse, my wheels screech loud and hard as I maneuver backward and search for another parking spot. After parking in the west lot, far from a certain gang member with a reputation that could scare off even the toughest Fairfield football players, Sierra and I walk up the front steps of Fairfield High. Unfortunately, Alex Fuentes and the rest of his gang friends are hanging by the front doors. “Walk right past them,” Sierra mutters. “Whatever you do, don’t look in their eyes.” It’s pretty hard not to when Alex Fuentes steps right in front of me and blocks my path. What’s that prayer you’re supposed to say right before you know you’re going to die?

Studies have documented that families who habitually eat dinner seem to raise children with better homework skills, higher grades, greater emotional control, and more confidence. Making your bed every morning is correlated with better productivity, greater sense of well-being, and stronger skills at sticking with a budget. It’s not that family meal or a tidy bed causes better grades or less frivolous spending. But somehow those initial shifts start chain reactions that help other good habits take hold.

So can we arrive at a general principle as to why e-books have flopped in developed markets while audio and video streaming have triumphed? The technology commentator and best-selling author Edward Tenner argues that there are several reasons people are sometimes reluctant to abandon an old technology in favor of a new one. The first involves the potential vulnerabilities of the new thing. For instance, the fax machine is now a museum piece, but for a while people continued to prefer it over emailing scanned documents out of security concerns. Another potential reason involves aesthetics and nostalgia. Although dwarfed by music CDs and streaming, vinyl record sales continue to grow within the niche market of music aficionados. And despite improvements in automatic transmissions, certain car lovers prefer stick shifts. Perhaps the key to understanding format resilience is that technologies rise and fall as part of ecosystems, rarely on their own or by themselves. Those ecosystems need to evolve quickly, through open innovation, in order to appeal to new generations of users, transforming the landscape in the process. E-book platforms have remained fundamentally closed to external innovators, especially on the software side. As a result, the functionality of e-books remains limited. Moreover, research indicates that reading a physical book enables the reader to absorb information more efficiently than reading the same book on an e-reader or a tablet. “The implicit feel of where you are in a physical book turns out to be more important than we realized,” argues Abigail Sellen, a scientist and engineer at Microsoft Research Cambridge in England. “Only when you get an e-book do you start to miss it. I don’t think e-book manufacturers have thought enough about how you might visualize where you are in a book.