Stuff And Sam Quotes

Sam:"Okay, what words would you use then?" I leaned back in the seat, thinking, as Sam looked at me doubtfully. He was right to look doubtful. My head didn't work with words very well- at least not in this abstract, descriptive sort of way. Grace:"Sensitive" I tried. Sam translated: "Squishy" Grace:"Creative" Sam:"Dangerously emo" Grace:"Thoughtful" Sam:"Feng shui." I laughed so hard I snorted. Grace:"How did you get feng shui out of thoughtful?" Sam:"You know, because in feng shui, you arrange funiture and plants and stuff in thoughtful ways.

Sensitive," I tried. Sam translated: "Squishy." "Creative." "Dangerously emo." "Thoughtful." "Feng shui." I laughed so hard I snorted. "How do you get feng shui out of 'thoughtful'?" "You know, because in feng shui, you arrange furniture and plants and stuff in thoughtful ways." Sam shrugged. "To make you calm. Zenlike. Or something. I'm not one hundred percent sure how it all works, besides the thoughtful part.

Look. This has been… fun.” Lie. This had been nerve-racking and I needed to go masturbate. “But I have to go. I’ve got stuff to do before I head out again.” Masturbate. “Wizard stuff. Like… secret wizard stuff.” Masturbate.

Voicemail #1: “Hi, Isabel Culpeper. I am lying in my bed, looking at the ceiling. I am mostly naked. I am thinking of … your mother. Call me.” Voicemail #2: The first minute and thirty seconds of “I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You” by the Bee Gees. Voicemail #3: “I’m bored. I need to be entertained. Sam is moping. I may kill him with his own guitar. It would give me something to do and also make him say something. Two birds with one stone! I find all these old expressions unnecessarily violent. Like, ring around the rosy. That’s about the plague, did you know? Of course you did. The plague is, like, your older cousin. Hey, does Sam talk to you? He says jack shit to me. God, I’m bored. Call me.” Voicemail #4: “Hotel California” by the Eagles, in its entirety, with every instance of the word California replaced with Minnesota. Voicemail #5: “Hi, this is Cole St. Clair. Want to know two true things? One, you’re never picking up this phone. Two, I’m never going to stop leaving long messages. It’s like therapy. Gotta talk to someone. Hey, you know what I figured out today? Victor’s dead. I figured it out yesterday, too. Every day I figure it out again. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I feel like there’s no one I can —” Voicemail #6: “So, yeah, I’m sorry. That last message went a little pear-shaped. You like that expression? Sam said it the other day. Hey, try this theory on for size: I think he’s a dead British housewife reincarnated into a Beatle’s body. You know, I used to know this band that put on fake British accents for their shows. Boy, did they suck, aside from being assholes. I can’t remember their name now. I’m either getting senile or I’ve done enough to my brain that stuff’s falling out. Not so fair of me to make this one-sided, is it? I’m always talking about myself in these things. So, how are you, Isabel Rosemary Culpeper? Smile lately? Hot Toddies. That was the name of the band. The Hot Toddies.” Voicemail #20: “I wish you’d answer.

This isn't champagne anymore. We went through the champagne a long time ago. This is serious stuff. The days of champagne are long gone.

Hey, Hank, I notice all the women around your place lately ... good looking stuff; you're doing all right." "Sam," I say, "that's not true; I am one of God's most lonely men.

No cursing,” I scolded him. “You’re a knight. You don’t get to do that. You gave up that right when you swore your oath to the King. You have to lead by example now. So say stuff like ‘fudge toast’ and ‘mothercrackers’ instead of ‘shit whore’ and ‘fuck storm.

Just because something makes sense after the fact doesn't mean it was obvious all along.

Sam frowns at me, suddenly serious. "You know, I thought--for most of the first year we lived together--that you were going to kill me." That makes me nearly spit out beer, I laugh so hard. "No, look--living with you, it's like knowing there's a loaded gun on the other side of the room. You're like this leopard who's pretending to be a house cat." That only makes me laugh harder. "Shut up," he says. "You might do normal stuff, but a leopard can drink milk or fall off things like a house cat. It's obvious you're not--not like the rest of us. I'll look over at you, and you'll be flexing your claws, or I don't know, eating a freshly killed antelope." "Oh," I say. It's a ridiculous metaphor, but the hilarity has gone out of me. I thought I did a good job of fitting in--maybe not perfect, but not as bad as Sam makes it sound. "It's like Audrey," he says, stabbing the air with a finger clearly well on his way to inebriated and full of determination to make me understand his theory. "You acted like she went out with you because you did this good job of being a nice guy." "I am a nice guy." I try to be. Sam snorts. "She liked you because you scared her. And then you scared her too much.

Life is not a dress rehearsal—this is probably it. Make it count. Time is extremely limited and goes by fast. Do what makes you happy and fulfilled—few people get remembered hundreds of years after they die anyway. Don’t do stuff that doesn’t make you happy (this happens most often when other people want you to do something). Don’t spend time trying to maintain relationships with people you don’t like, and cut negative people out of your life. Negativity is really bad. Don’t let yourself make excuses for not doing the things you want to do.

For a behavior to be part of your personality, it should be something that you do repeatedly.

Sam, she was smart as hell. And she knew stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. She also felt stuff. Oh, man, could Sam feel. Sometimes I thought she was doing all the thinking, all the feeling, and all the living for both of us.

Much of the stuff we gather about us and the environments we create are there not to send messages about our identities but specifically to manage our emotions and thoughts.

As we’ll see, a messy desk doesn’t always signal a messy mind

The legal stuff gets twisted too. The courts, instead of being fair judges, end up supporting this unfair takeover. It's like they're saying to the settlers, "Yep, go ahead, it's a court order, so technically you are not evil".

Look it - you start out as an artist, I started out when I was nineteen, and you’re full of defenses. You have all of this stuff to prove. You have all of these shields in front of you. All your weapons are out. It’s like you’re going into battle. You can accomplish a certain amount that way. But then you get to a point where you say, “But there’s this whole other territory I’m leaving out.” And that territory becomes more important as you grow older. You begin to see that you leave out so much when you go to battle with the shield and all the rest of it. You have to start including that other side or die a horrible death as an artist with your shield stuck on the front of your face forever. You can’t grow that way. And I don’t think you can grow as a person that way, either. There just comes a point when you have to relinquish some of that and risk becoming more open to the vulnerable side, which I think is the female side. It’s much more courageous than the male side.

Not all behavior leaves physical remains. Smiling doesn’t, and neither does walking or talking. But the residue of actions that do leave their mark can tell us a lot about a person’s traits, values, and goals.

It was this newsletter thing called "They Walk Among Us" ... All the news that no one in their right mind would ever believe. It's all this stuff about aliens and weird happenings that might be connected to alines. Like, apparently a twelve-year-old girl was murdered in London and people think she might have been a casualty in a secret war between extraterrestrials living on Earth. Totally nuts.

Apparently, anxious people high on neuroticism are using the self-affirmations and inspirational messages of posters to regulate their tendency to worry about things and become blue. The posters are a visual form of self-medication.

I further believe that personality seeps into walls and is slowly released. . .

Identity claims are either directed toward others or directed at the self, and both kinds have their own psychological functions.

importance of paying attention to location when considering identity claims. Placement determines the psychological function that the clue serves.

Parade your wares! Strut your stuff;someone needs to see your success to make a success.

Three broad mechanisms—identity claims, feeling regulators, and behavioral residue—seemed to connect people to the spaces that surrounded them.

A man who does not see stuff and nonsense in a moonshine will blow his life to bits.

So what if sometimes Sam was an emotional exhibitionist, going up and down all the time? She could be a storm. But she could be a soft candle lighting up a dark room. So what if she made me a little crazy? All of it—​all her emotional stuff, her ever-changing moods and tones of voice—​it made her seem so incredibly alive.

Racism, Dr. Sam. I worry for my kids about racism. Racism doesn't appear to take holidays or time off. What can I do about this stuff?

Don't stick that on me until we know for a fact that you have the same power Acheron does to keep cooties off that stuff

Time's a manmade concept, Sam,"Dean said softly."Stuff happens in cycles, and we just put numbers on it to make it look like we know something about it.

I realized during that session that I wanted Sam to grow up with the sense that it’s safe to fall, that there’s enough of the important stuff in the world for him, including Band-Aids.

Eddie poured it into the hole, teeth bared at the pain, and then went ahead and used the stuff on both his leg and the laceration in his scalp before he could lose his courage. He tried to remember if Frodo and Sam had had to face anything even close to the horrors of hydrogen peroxide, and couldn't come up with anything, Well, of course, they had elves to heal them, hadn't they?

I used to wish I had an easier life," he mused. "Some families sail through years with nothing touching them. They have no tragedies. They go on about how lucky they are. Yet sometimes it seems to me they're half alive. When something goes wrong for them, and it does for everyone sooner or later, their trauma is much worse. They've had nothing bad happen to them before. In the meantime, they think little problems, like losing a wallet, are big deals. They think it's ruined their day. They have no idea what a hard day's like. It's going to be incredibly tough for them when they find out." He'd also developed his own version of making the most of every minute. "Through Sam I found out how quickly things can change. Because of him I've learned to appreciate each moment and try not to hold on to things. Life's more exciting and intense that way. It's like the yogurt that goes off after three days. It tastes so much better than the stuff that lasts three weeks.

When I asked Sam Shillace, who ran Gmail and Google Apps for four years, about the costliest mistake he's seen engineers make, his response was, "Trying to rewrite stuff from scratch -- that's the cardinal sin.

Maybe you can bring that up at the next fan club meeting too.” “Hey! I don’t even know what you’re talking about, okay? I hear things when I’m on my travels. I don’t even care about stuff like that.” I cared so hard. I had actually gone three times to the fan club meeting. They knew me as Mervin. I had a backstory and everything. It was my turn to bring muffins next time. I was considering poppy seed. Or cranberry. Fun.

One afternoon, Sam, the onion man, and his donkey, Mary Lou, were returning to his boat, which was anchored just a little off shore. It was late in November and the peach trees had lost most of their leaves. “Sam!” someone called. He turned around to see three men running after him, waving their hats. He waited. “Afternoon, Walter. Bo, Jesse,” he greeted them, as they walked up, catching their breath. “Glad we caught you,” said Bo. “We’re going rattlesnake hunting in the morning.” “We want to get some of your lizard juice,” said Walter. “I ain’t a-scared of no rattlesnake,” said Jesse. “But I don’t want to come across one of those red-eyed monsters. I seen one once, and that was enough. I knew about the red eyes, of course. I hadn’t heard about the big black teeth.” “It’s the white tongues that get me,” said Bo. Sam gave each man two bottles of pure onion juice. He told them to drink one bottle before going to bed that night, then a half bottle in the morning, and then a half bottle around lunchtime. “You sure this stuff works?” asked Walter. “I tell you what,” said Sam. “If it doesn’t, you can come back next week and I’ll give you your money back.” Walter looked around unsure, as Bo and Jesse laughed. Then Sam laughed, too. Even Mary Lou let out a rare hee-haw. “Just remember,” Sam told the men before they left. “It’s very important you drink a bottle tonight. You got to get it into your bloodstream. The lizards don’t like onion blood.

Sam’s shoulders shifted. He thought Frank was just being smart-arsed. but Sam’s never done undercover, he had no way of knowing: undercovers are different: there’s nothing they won’t do, to themselves or anyone else, to take their guy down. There was no point arguing on this one because he meant what he said: if his kid were killed, he would take it without a murmur. It’s one of the most powerful lures of undercover, the ruthlessness, no borderlines: strong stuff, strong enough to take your breath away.It’s one of the reasons I left.

I shouldn’t have let myself, because I was going to have to go back out there, and I’d have a swollen, red nose and pink eyes and everyone would know — but I couldn’t stop. It was like they were choking me, my tears. I had to gasp to breathe around them. My head was full of Jack sitting at the table, being a jerk, the sound of my father’s voice talking about the sharpshooters in helicopters, the idea that Grace had nearly died without me even knowing it, stupid boys throwing stuff into my shirt, which was probably cut too low for a family dinner anyway, Cole looking down at me on the bed, and the thing that had set me off, Sam’s honest, broken text about Grace. Jack was gone, my father always got what he wanted, I wanted and hated Cole St. Clair, and no one, no one would ever feel that way about me, the way that Sam felt about Grace when he sent that text.

When you’re a kid, you don’t think about big stuff that could change your life. You think about small things that might terrify you –like a bad report card or missing a goal in front of all your friends or your friends no longer wanting to play with you. Because that's the biggest stuff you know. The biggest disappointments are all tied to this small little universe of yours, because bigger things cannot fit into a small universe. If you wanted bigger things in there you needed to have more room –or make more room. Perhaps you thought about your parents or your pets dying, which was rare. But all you knew was you would be terribly sad and lonely. And on those occasions when people or pets actually died, someone usually came along and distracted you from feeling too much of your actual feelings. Grownups did that –they never left you alone to feel alone or think alone too much. They tended to think you are too small to know how to think and feel in big heaps, so they took parts of your heap onto themselves. To help – but in the long run –it doesn’t help at all. Because if you do not see, or feel or think, or taste the bitter things in life, you don’t know they exist. You have not seen enough of the world to know how terrible it could be. And unfortunately for Sam, this inability to process change persisted into adulthood.

Fear he walks up to my Volks after I have parked and rocks it back and forth grinning around his cigar. “hey, Hank, I notice all the women around your place lately … good looking stuff; you’re doing all right.” “Sam,” I say, “that’s not true; I am one of God’s most lonely men.” “we got some nice girls at the parlor, you oughta try some of them.” “I’m afraid of those places, Sam, I can’t walk into them.” “I’ll send you a girl then, real nice stuff.” “Sam, don’t send me a whore, I always fall in love with whores.” “o.k. friend,” he says, “let me know if you change your mind.” I watch him walk away. some men are always on top of their game. I am mostly always confused. he can break a man in half and doesn’t know who Mozart is. who wants to listen to music anyhow on a rainy Wednesday night?

I’m getting my stuff,” he said, and bolted for the steps. “You don’t have to move out,” Astrid called after him. Sam stopped halfway up the steps. “Oh, I’m sorry. Is that the voice of the council telling me where I can go?” “There’s no point having a town council if you think you don’t have to listen to it,” Astrid said. She was using her patient voice, trying to calm the situation. “Sam, if you ignore us, no one will pay attention.” “Guess what, Astrid, they’re already ignoring you. The only reason anyone pays any attention to you and the others is because they’re scared of Edilio’s soldiers.” He thumped his chest. “And even more scared of me.

They carved it up with surgical precision…And if anyone was a thief, God bless them, maybe their grandchildren will turn out decent. Ugh! And these are the democrats…[Silence.] They put on American suits and did what their Uncle Sam told them to do. But American suits don’t fit them right. They sit crooked. That’s what you get! It wasn’t freedom they were after, it was blue jeans, supermarkets…They were fooled by the shiny wrappers…Now our stores are filled with all sorts of stuff. An abundance. But heaps of salami have nothing to do with happiness. Or glory. We used to be a great nation! Now we’re nothing but peddlers and looters…grain merchants and managers…

Cade studied her for a moment, then sat forward in his chair. “Seriously, what is it about this guy? He’s just a rich computer geek with good hair.” Rylann smiled. “I think there’s a little more to it than that.” “Christ, you are smitten.” He threw up his hands. “What is going on with everyone these days? Sam Wilkins is babbling about a meet-cute, Cameron’s sneaking off to get hitched, and now you’re all starry-eyed over the Twitter Terrorist. Has everyone been sneaking happy pills out of the evidence room when I’m not looking?” "No, just some really good pot.” Cade laughed out loud at that. “You are a funny one, Pierce. I’ll say that.” “So does that mean we’re still on for Starbucks later today?” He studied her suspiciously. “You’re not going to want to talk about Kyle Rhodes the whole time, are you?” “Actually, yes. And then we’ll go shoe shopping together and get mani-pedis.” She threw him a get-real look. “We’ll talk about the same stuff we always talk about.” With a grin, he finally nodded. “Fine. Three o’clock, Pierce. I’ll swing by your office

Today, each of you will make a decision,” Caine said. “To go with Sam, or to stay here. I won’t try to stop anyone, and I won’t hold it against anyone.” He placed his hand over his heart. “For those who choose to stay, let me be very clear: I will be in charge. Not as a mayor, but as a king. My word will be law. My decisions will be final.” That caused some murmuring, most of it unhappy. “But I’ll also do everything I can to leave each of you alone. Quinn, if he chooses to stay, can still fish. Albert, if he chooses to stay, will still run his business. Freaks and normals will be treated equally.” He seemed about to add something else but caught himself after a sidelong look at Toto. The silence lengthened and Sam knew it was time for him to speak. In the past he’d always had Astrid at his side for things like this. He was not much of a speaker. And in any case, he didn’t have much to say. “Anyone who goes with me has a vote in how we do stuff. I guess I’ll be more or less in charge, but we’ll probably choose some other people, create a council like . . . Well, hopefully better than we had before. And, um . . .” He was tempted to laugh at his own pitiful performance. “Look, people, if you want someone, some . . . king, good grief, to tell you what to do, stay here. If you want to make more of your own decisions, well, come with me.” He hadn’t said enough to even cause Toto to comment. “You know which side I’m on, people,” Brianna yelled. “Sam’s been carrying the load since day one.” “It was Caine that saved us,” a voice cried out. “Where was Sam?” The crowd seemed undecided. Caine was beaming confidence, but Sam noticed that his jaw clenched, his smile was forced, and he was worried.

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

I glanced over and saw Wyatt glaring at me. Journey’s “Lovin’ Touchin’, Squeezin’” was playing on the radio. “What?” I asked. “You secretly hate me, don’t you.” He gestured toward the radio. “You can’t stand the thought of me taking a much needed nap and leaving you to drive without conversation. You’re torturing me with this sappy stuff.” “It’s Journey. I love this song.” Wyatt mumbled something under his breath, picked up the CD case, and started looking through it. He paused with a choked noise, his eyes growing huge. “You’re joking, Sam. Justin Bieber? What are you, a twelve-year old girl?” There’s gonna be one less lonely girl, I sang in my head. That was a great song. How could he not like that song? Still, I squirmed a bit in embarrassment. “A twelve-year old girl gave me that CD,” I lied. “For my birthday.” Wyatt snorted. “It’s a good thing you’re a terrible liar. Otherwise, I’d be horrified at the thought that a demon has been hanging out with a bunch of giggling pre-teens.” He continued to thumb through the CDs. “Air Supply Greatest Hits? No, no, I’m wrong here. It’s an Air Supply cover band in Spanish.” He waved the offending CD in my face. “Sam, what on earth are you thinking? How did you even get this thing?” “Some tenant left it behind,” I told him. “We evicted him, and there were all these CDs. Most were in Spanish, but I’ve got a Barry Manilow in there, too. That one’s in English.” Wyatt looked at me a moment, and with the fastest movement I’ve ever seen, rolled down the window and tossed the case of CDs out onto the highway. It barely hit the road before a semi plowed over it. I was pissed. “You asshole. I liked those CDs. I don’t come over to your house and trash your video games, or drive over your controllers. If you think that will make me listen to that Dubstep crap for the next two hours, then you better fucking think again.” “I’m sorry Sam, but it’s past time for a musical intervention here. You can’t keep listening to this stuff. It wasn’t even remotely good when it was popular, and it certainly hasn’t gained anything over time. You need to pull yourself together and try to expand your musical interests a bit. You’re on a downward spiral, and if you keep this up, you’ll find yourself friendless, living in a box in a back alley, stinking of your own excrement, and covered in track marks.” I looked at him in surprise. I had no idea Air Supply led to lack of bowel control and hard core drug usage. I wondered if it was something subliminal, a kind of compulsion programmed into the lyrics. Was Russell Hitchcock a sorcerer? He didn’t look that menacing to me, but sorcerers were pretty sneaky. Even so, I was sure Justin Bieber was okay. As soon as we hit a rest stop, I was ordering a replacement from my iPhone.

repeated failure is key to doing bold things, to being entrepreneurial. Try stuff, fail, fail fast, try again. When Sam Walton was asked why Walmart was so successful, he said, “We do a lot of things right.” Then asked how they did things right, he said, “Because we did them wrong the first time.

I started Sam on a computer very early—probably before he was three. He couldn’t move the mouse, he couldn’t do anything. He sat in my lap and did one of the Winnie the Pooh books on a computer. And the reason I wanted to do this, despite the controversy over how soon you should get a computer around a kid, is that I wanted him to see this as just a natural part of his environment, a normal tool for doing stuff with, nothing special. We did the same thing with books, reading to him, allowing him to claw them and throw them around, all in the interest of having him see books as a normal part of his life and a normal part of his family.

That's what love does right? Shows up and sticks around, even for the hard stuff. Keeps its promises~ Sam to Pete (pg 322)

I hope this means you’re getting a new lab?” “I don’t know, T. I gotta run, we’ve got Aiden’s autopsy done and I need to write up some notes. By the way, tell Baldwin the crime scene techs found Aiden’s clothes in a bin behind the McDonald’s on West End. We’ll get that sent to his lab, if he’d like.” Baldwin said, “Yes, please, Sam. Did you find an ID?” “There was a wallet and a passport, both with ID in the name of Jasper Lohan. High-end stuff, they look legitimate.” “Jasper Lohan. I don’t recognize that name for him. No wonder we lost him in St. Louis. Cunning bastard.” He wrote a quick note, then said, “Okay. Thanks.” They hung up with promises to have dinner over the weekend. The banality of the arrangements made Taylor long for some peace and quiet, reminded her that she wasn’t like everyone else. Making plans was a luxury, a formality. In most cases, either she or Sam, or Baldwin, or Sam’s husband Simon, would be called to work a case. They lived in twenty-four-hour-a-day jobs, their lives cordoned off at the whim of a criminal.

The story wasn’t at heart only about economic devastation. It wasn’t just about those at the bottom. Not just hotel maids or supermarket cashiers or single moms. It was all of us. This made more sense as I read what neuroscience can now tell us: that every human brain has capacity for addiction. Isolation is part of why some people get addicted and some do not. So was trauma. Abuse, rape, neglect, PTSD, a parent’s drug use were as unspoken in America as addiction and as prevalent. The epidemic was revealing this. I also connected the epidemic to consumer marketing of legal addictive stuffs: sugar, video games, social media, gambling.

Niobe earned the ire of the gods by bragging about her seven lovely daughters and seven “handsome sons—whom the easily offended Olympians soon slaughtered for her impertinence. Tantalus, Niobe’s father, killed his own son and served him at a royal banquet. As punishment, Tantalus had to stand for all eternity up to his neck in a river, with a branch loaded with apples dangling above his nose. Whenever he tried to eat or drink, however, the fruit would be blown away beyond his grasp or the water would recede. Still, while elusiveness and loss tortured Tantalus and Niobe, it is actually a surfeit of their namesake elements that has decimated central Africa. There’s a good chance you have tantalum or niobium in your pocket right now. Like their periodic table neighbors, both are dense, heat-resistant, noncorrosive metals that hold a charge well—qualities that make them vital for compact cell phones. In the mid-1990s cell phone designers started demanding both metals, especially tantalum, from the world’s largest supplier, the Democratic Republic of Congo, then called Zaire. Congo sits next to Rwanda in central Africa, and most of us probably remember the Rwandan butchery of the 1990s. But none of us likely remembers the day in 1996 when the ousted Rwandan government of ethnic Hutus spilled into Congo seeking “refuge. At the time it seemed just to extend the Rwandan conflict a few miles west, but in retrospect it was a brush fire blown right into a decade of accumulated racial kindling. Eventually, nine countries and two hundred ethnic tribes, each with its own ancient alliances and unsettled grudges, were warring in the dense jungles. Nonetheless, if only major armies had been involved, the Congo conflict likely would have petered out. Larger than Alaska and dense as Brazil, Congo is even less accessible than either by roads, meaning it’s not ideal for waging a protracted war. Plus, poor villagers can’t afford to go off and fight unless there’s money at stake. Enter tantalum, niobium, and cellular technology. Now, I don’t mean to impute direct blame. Clearly, cell phones didn’t cause the war—hatred and grudges did. But just as clearly, the infusion of cash perpetuated the brawl. Congo has 60 percent of the world’s supply of the two metals, which blend together in the ground in a mineral called coltan. Once cell phones caught on—sales rose from virtually zero in 1991 to more than a billion by 2001—the West’s hunger proved as strong as Tantalus’s, and coltan’s price grew tenfold. People purchasing ore for cell phone makers didn’t ask and didn’t care where the coltan came from, and Congolese miners had no idea what the mineral was used for, knowing only that white people paid for it and that they could use the profits to support their favorite militias. Oddly, tantalum and niobium proved so noxious because coltan was so democratic. Unlike the days when crooked Belgians ran Congo’s diamond and gold mines, no conglomerates controlled coltan, and no backhoes and dump trucks were necessary to mine it. Any commoner with a shovel and a good back could dig up whole pounds of the stuff in creek beds (it looks like thick mud). In just hours, a farmer could earn twenty times what his neighbor did all year, and as profits swelled, men abandoned their farms for prospecting. This upset Congo’s already shaky food supply, and people began hunting gorillas for meat, virtually wiping them out, as if they were so many buffalo. But gorilla deaths were nothing compared to the human atrocities. It’s not a good thing when money pours into a country with no government.

That was the start of a lot of the practices and philosophies that still prevail at Wal-Mart today. I was always looking for offbeat suppliers or sources. I started driving over to Tennessee to some fellows I found who would give me special buys at prices way below what Ben Franklin was charging me. One I remember was Wright Merchandising Co. in Union City, which would sell to small businesses like mine at good wholesale prices. I’d work in the store all day, then take off around closing and drive that windy road over to the Mississippi River ferry at Cottonwood Point, Missouri, and then into Tennessee with an old homemade trailer hitched to my car. I’d stuff that car and trailer with whatever I could get good deals on—usually on softlines: ladies’ panties and nylons, men’s shirts—and I’d bring them back, price them low, and just blow that stuff out the store.

"Get out of here," I said, barely able to open my jaw enough to get the words out. Rafe looked surprised at first but seeing my face, that melted away and his own face hardened. He turned to Nicole. "What'd you do?" he said. "Wh-what did I do?" she squeaked. Her blue eyes rounded and she flinched, like a whipped puppy seeing a raised hand. "I-I don't understand." "What's going on here?" Hayley said. "She..." I clenched my fists tighter and my face started to throb, as if I was about to shift. I took a deep breath and tried to find clam so I could explain. "I-I don't understand," Nicole said again, tears welling up. "Oh, stuff the theatrics," Sam said. She turned to the others. "Nicole killed Serena."

You see, it started when my friends and I were all hanging out in my room one day. There are four of us that all hang out together, mostly because we are all into the same stuff.

A company called Kilbrew Resorts bought Song Island about six years ago,” Marcus said. “They were going to turn it into a private island for rich people, powered exclusively by solar and wind power. It was supposed to be a paradise for the environmentally-conscious. You know, get the hippie rich people from the cities someplace to play and let them leave with a clear conscience, all that good stuff. Unfortunately, they never got around to installing the wind component, but they did finish most of the solar installations.

Finally, new blood!” Al bellowed at the sight of them. Al’s belly shook a bit as he said it, from either too much food or too much beer, or maybe both. If it was the latter, Will wondered where Al was hiding the good stuff.

A little later on, Phil ran what became one of the most famous item promotions in our history. We sent him down to open store number 52 in Hot Springs, Arkansas—the first store we ever opened in a town that already had a Kmart. Phil got there and decided Kmart had been getting away with some pretty high prices in the absence of any discounting competition. So he worked up a detergent promotion that turned into the world’s largest display ever of Tide, or maybe Cheer—some detergent. He worked out a deal to get about $1.00 off a case if he would buy some absolutely ridiculous amount of detergent, something like 3,500 cases of the giant-sized box. Then he ran it as an ad promotion for, say, $1.99 a box, off from the usual $3.97. Well, when all of us in the Bentonville office saw how much he’d bought, we really thought old Phil had completely gone over the dam. This was an unbelievable amount of soap. It made up a pyramid of detergent boxes that ran twelve to eighteen cases high—all the way to the ceiling, and it was 75 or 100 feet long, which took up the whole aisle across the back of the store, and then it was about 12 feet wide so you could hardly get past it. I think a lot of companies would have fired Phil for that one, but we always felt we had to try some of this crazy stuff. PHIL

Sam, can you, you know, like burn that concrete off her hands?” “No. I can’t aim that precisely.” “I don’t even know what can be done,” Edilio said as he fed the girl another microscopic bite of food. “You try and break that stuff off with a sledge hammer or something, or even a hammer and a chisel, it’s going to really hurt. Probably break every bone in her hands, man.” “Who would have done this to her?” Lana wondered. “That’s a Coates Academy uniform,” Astrid answered. “We’re probably not far from there.

Sam,” Astrid yelled. “Quick.” Sam thought he was too far gone to respond, but he somehow started his feet moving again and went up to where Little Pete was standing and Astrid kneeling. There was a girl lying in the dirt. Her clothing was a mess, her black hair ratty. She was Asian, pretty without being beautiful, and little more than skin and bones. But the first thing they noticed was that her forearms ended in a solid concrete block. Astrid made a quick sign of the cross and pressed two fingers against the girl’s neck. “Lana,” Astrid cried. Lana sized up the situation quickly. “I don’t see any injuries. I think maybe she’s starving or else sick in some other way.” “What’s she doing out here?” Edilio wondered. “Oh, man, what did someone do to her hands?” “I can’t heal hunger,” Lana said. “I tried it on myself when I was with the pack. Didn’t work.” Edilio untwisted the cap from his water bottle, knelt, and carefully drizzled water across the girl’s cheek so that a few drops curled into her mouth. “Look, she’s swallowing.” Edilio broke a tiny bite from one of the PowerBars and placed it gently into the girl’s mouth. After a second the girl’s mouth began to move, to chew. “There’s a road over there,” Sam said. “I think so, anyway. A dirt road, I think.” “Someone drove by and dumped her here,” Astrid agreed. Sam pointed at the dirt. “You can see how she dragged that block.” “Some sick stuff going on,” Edilio muttered angrily. “Who would do something like this?

What’s up, Albert?” “Well, I’ve done inventory at Ralph’s, and I think if I had a lot of help, I could put together an okay Thanksgiving dinner.” Sam stared at him. He blinked. “What?” “Thanksgiving. It’s next week.” “Uh-huh.” “There are ovens at Ralph’s, big ones. And no one has taken the frozen turkeys. Figure two hundred and fifty kids if pretty much everyone from Perdido Beach shows up, right? One turkey will feed maybe eight people, so we need thirty-one, thirty-two turkeys. No problem there, because there are forty-six turkeys at Ralph’s.” “Thirty-one turkeys?” “Cranberry sauce will be no problem, stuffing is no problem, no one has taken much stuffing yet, although I’ll have to figure out how to mix, like, seven different brands and styles together, see how it tastes.” “Stuffing,” Sam echoed solemnly. “We don’t have enough canned yams, we’ll have to do fresh along with some baked potatoes. The big problem is going to be whipped cream and ice cream for the pies.” Sam wanted to burst out laughing, but at the same time he found it touching and reassuring that Albert had put so much thought into the question. “I imagine the ice cream is pretty much gone,” Sam said. “Yeah. We’re very low on ice cream. And kids have been taking the canned whipped cream, too.” “But we can have pie?” “We have some frozen. And we have some pie shells we can bake up ourselves.” “That would be nice,” Sam said. “I’ll need to start three days before. I’ll need, like, at least ten people to help. I can haul the tables out of the church basement and set up in the plaza. I think I can do it.” “I’ll bet you can, Albert,” Sam said with feeling. “Mother Mary’s going to have the prees make centerpieces.” “Listen, Albert…” Albert raised a hand, cutting Sam off. “I know. I mean, I know we may have some great big fight before that. And I heard you have your fifteenth coming up. All kinds of bad stuff may happen. But, Sam—” This time, Sam cut him off. “Albert? Get moving on planning the big meal.” “Yeah?” “Yeah. It will give people something to look forward to.

A little later on, Phil ran what became one of the most famous item promotions in our history. We sent him down to open store number 52 in Hot Springs, Arkansas—the first store we ever opened in a town that already had a Kmart. Phil got there and decided Kmart had been getting away with some pretty high prices in the absence of any discounting competition. So he worked up a detergent promotion that turned into the world’s largest display ever of Tide, or maybe Cheer—some detergent. He worked out a deal to get about $1.00 off a case if he would buy some absolutely ridiculous amount of detergent, something like 3,500 cases of the giant-sized box. Then he ran it as an ad promotion for, say, $1.99 a box, off from the usual $3.97. Well, when all of us in the Bentonville office saw how much he’d bought, we really thought old Phil had completely gone over the dam. This was an unbelievable amount of soap. It made up a pyramid of detergent boxes that ran twelve to eighteen cases high—all the way to the ceiling, and it was 75 or 100 feet long, which took up the whole aisle across the back of the store, and then it was about 12 feet wide so you could hardly get past it. I think a lot of companies would have fired Phil for that one, but we always felt we had to try some of this crazy stuff. PHIL GREEN: “Mr. Sam usually let me do whatever I wanted on these promotions because he figured I wasn’t going to screw it up, but on this one he came down and said, ‘Why did you buy so much? You can’t sell all of this!’ But the thing was so big it made the news, and everybody came to look at it, and it was all gone in a week. I had another one that scared them up in Bentonville too. This guy from Murray of Ohio called one day and said he had 200 Murray 8 horsepower riding mowers available at the end of the season, and he could let us have them for $175. Did we want any? And I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll take 200.’ And he said, ‘Two hundred!’ We’d been selling them for $447, I think. So when they came in we unpacked every one of them and lined them all up out in front of the store, twenty-five in a row, eight rows deep. Ran a chain through them and put a big sign up that said: ‘8 h.p. Murray Tractors, $199.’ Sold every one of them. I guess I was just always a promoter, and being an early Wal-Mart manager was as good a place to promote as there ever was.

Rogers had been open about a year, and everything was just piled up on tables, with no rhyme or reason whatsoever. Sam asked me to kind of group the stuff by category or department, and that’s when we began our department system. The thing I remember most, though, was the way we priced goods. Merchandise would come in and we would just lay it down on the floor and get out the invoice. Sam wouldn’t let us hedge on a price at all. Say the list price was $1.98, but we had only paid 50 cents. Initially, I would say, ‘Well, it’s originally $1.98, so why don’t we sell it for $1.25?’ And he’d say, ‘No. We paid 50 cents for it. Mark it up 30 percent, and that’s it. No matter what you pay for it, if we get a great deal, pass it on to the customer.’ And of course that’s what we did.” It

try to hypnotize Chris here,” Bear says, “and then we’ll teach him the Greek alphabet. Right, Sam?” “If Chris is a good subject, and I believe he very well might be, it should work,” Hutto says in a surprisingly deep voice. “But don’t fuck around with him,” the Bear warns. “Any funny stuff and I’ll break your goddamn neck.” Hutto’s look of fright is a visual contract that he won’t try any funny stuff. “You wanna’ try it, Chris?” I ask. He nods uncertainly. “OK, Sam. Let’s give it a whirl.” Hutto directs a study lamp and pulls a chair up close to the Martian’s, leaning forward against its back. At his nod, Dense turns out the overhead light. He removes a shiny fountain pen and holds it vertically in front of the Martian. The steady pen sparkles in the lamplight. “Now Chris,” he says softly, “I want you to relax

I should open a school. Danny’s Academy for Blowing Shit Up and Stuff.

She cleaned the bathroom, too,” Sam says as he comes around the corner. His hair is wet, and he leans toward me. “Do I smell too much like a girl?” he asks. He looks slightly abashedly at Kit. “I used your shampoo. And your soap.” Paul shoves him in the shoulder. “He would have used your tampons if you’d left any in there.” Her face colors prettily. “Stay out of her stuff, dickwad,” Paul warns.

During the bus ride, our only sustenance was stuff we’d scored from vending machines—a bag of chips, a sleeve of cookies, a bottle of soda. I ate the food. Sam wolfed down the wrappers and the plastic bottle. “Do you always eat trash?” I’d asked, more curious than disgusted. “You think what’s inside the packaging is any better?” He had a point. Some of those ingredients sounded as deadly as the

During the bus ride, our only sustenance was stuff we’d scored from vending machines—a bag of chips, a sleeve of cookies, a bottle of soda. I ate the food. Sam wolfed down the wrappers and the plastic bottle. “Do you always eat trash?” I’d asked, more curious than disgusted. “You think what’s inside the packaging is any better?” He had a point. Some of those ingredients sounded as deadly as the monsters. The

Come here, cupcake,” I hear Sam say softly. He pulls me against him and holds me close as I sob on his shoulder. I pull myself together when the elevator stops on our floor. Sam leads me into the apartment and over to the sofa. He sits down and tugs me onto his lap. I curl into him and he holds me close. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen her,” I say when the hiccupping sobs finally subside. “I know.” He rubs my back. “She still looks the same. But it’s wrong. So wrong.” “I know.” “She didn’t even come to see me. She just came for money.” “Yes, she did.” “She doesn’t care. She never did.” My voice breaks again, and I want to kick myself for letting her get to me like this. “I know.” “What should I do?” “What do you want to do?” “I want her to go away! I want her to have never existed. Ever. I want a do-over.” He hums, but doesn’t say anything. “But if I had a do-over, I wouldn’t have Emilio and Marta, or any of my sisters. And without them, I wouldn’t have you.” I look up. “I do have you, right?” “You got me, cupcake.” “I’m squishing you.” I move to get up, but he holds me tightly. “I’m made of stronger stuff than you might think.” “You told her you love me,” I say quietly. He goes still under me. His hand stops sweeping down my hair. “Do you?” He turns my head with a finger under my chin so he can look into my eyes. “You doubt it?” “Well,” I hedge, “I told you yesterday and you didn’t tell me back, so I didn’t know.” “Oh, fuck,” he breathes. “I thought it was a given.” “A given?” “God, I can’t breathe when I’m around you, Peck. I can’t think. I love you, and I don’t want to be apart from you. Ever.” “You love me.” It’s not a question this time. The birds in my head start to sing, and my heart does this happy glug-glug thing in my chest. “Yes, I fucking love you.” I

Look, people, I’m announcing a new rule. It’s going to seem harsh. But it’s necessary.” The word “harsh” got almost everyone’s attention. “We can’t have people sitting around all day playing Wii and watching DVDs. We need people to start working in the fields. So, here’s the thing: everyone age seven or older has to put in three days per week picking fruit or veggies. Then Albert’s going to work with the whole question of freezing stuff that can be frozen, or otherwise preserving stuff.” There was dead silence. And blank stares. “What I’m saying is, tomorrow we’ll have two school buses ready to go. They hold about fifty kids each and we need to have them mostly full because we’re going to pick some melons and it’s a lot of work.” More blank stares. “Okay, let me make this simple: get your brothers and sisters and friends and anyone over age seven and be in the square tomorrow morning at eight o’clock.” “But how about—?” “Just be there,” Sam said with less firmness than he’d intended. His frustration was draining away now, replaced by weariness and depression. “Just be there,” someone mimicked in a singsong voice. Sam closed his eyes, and for a moment he almost seemed to be asleep. Then he opened them again and managed a bleak smile. “Please. Be there,” he said quietly. He walked down the three steps and out of the church, knowing in his heart that few would answer his call.

I’m trying to help,” Albert said. “By paying him with beer?” “I paid him what he wanted, and Sam was okay with it. You were at the meeting,” Albert said. “Look, how else do you think you get someone like Orc to spend hours in the hot sun working? Astrid seems to think people will work just because we ask them to. Maybe some will. But Orc?” Lana could see his point. “Okay. I shouldn’t have jumped all over you.” “It’s okay. I’m getting used to it,” Albert said. “Suddenly I’m the bad guy. But you know what? I didn’t make people the way they are. If kids are going to work, they’re going to want something back.” “If they don’t work, we all starve.” “Yeah. I get that,” Albert said with more than a tinge of sarcasm. “Only, here’s the thing: Kids know we won’t let them starve as long as there’s any food left, right? So they figure, hey, let someone else do the work. Let someone else pick cabbages and artichokes.” Lana wanted to get back to her run. She needed to finish, to run to the FAYZ wall. But there was something fascinating about Albert. “Okay. So how do you get people to work?” He shrugged. “Pay them.” “You mean, money?” “Yeah. Except guess who had most of the money in their wallets and purses when they disappeared? Then a few kids stole what was left in cash registers and all. So if we start back using the old money we just make a few thieves powerful. It’s kind of a problem.” “Why is a kid going to work for money if they know we’ll share the food, anyway?” Lana asked. “Because some will do different stuff for money. I mean, look, some kids have no skills, right? So they pick the food for money. Then they take the money and spend it with some kid who can maybe cook the food for them, right? And that kid maybe needs a pair of sneakers and some other kid has rounded up all the sneakers and he has a store.” Lana realized her mouth was open. She laughed. The first time in a while. “Fine. Laugh,” Albert said, and turned away. “No, no, no,” Lana hastened to say. “No, I wasn’t making fun of you. It’s just that, I mean, you’re the only kid that has any kind of a plan for anything.

Go, Breeze,” someone yelled. But another voice yelled, “Quit showing off, stupid mutant.” Brianna stopped dead. Her dress settled back into place. “Who said that?” Zil. The same jerk who had picked on Jack over the phones. “Me,” Zil said, stepping forward. “And don’t bother trying to look tough. I’m not scared of you, freak.” “You should be,” Brianna hissed. Suddenly there was Dekka, up off her chair, hand extended between Brianna and Zil. “No,” she said in her deep voice. “None of that.” Quinn joined her. “Dekka’s right, we can’t be having fights and stuff here. Sam will shut this place down.” “Maybe we should have two different clubs,” a seventh grader named Antoine said. “You know, one for freaks and one for normals.” “Man, what is the matter with you?” Quinn demanded. “I don’t like her acting like she’s so cool, is all,” Zil said, stepping beside Antoine. “You should be on our side, Quinn. Everyone knows you’re a normal,” another kid, Lance, said. “Well…kind of normal. You’re still Quinn.

I’m trying to make a profit. I’m using batteries, toilet paper, and paper towels as currency. Each is something that will eventually be in short supply.” “You’re trying to get all the toilet paper in town?” Astrid shrilled. “Are you kidding?” “No, Astrid, I’m not kidding,” Albert said. “Look, right now, kids are playing with the stuff. I saw little kids throwing rolls of it around on their lawns like it was a toy. So—” “So your solution is to try and take it all away from people?” “You’d rather see it wasted?” “Yeah, actually,” Astrid huffed. “Rather than you getting it all for yourself. You’re acting like a jerk.” Albert’s eyes flared. “Look, Astrid, now kids know they can buy their way into the club with it. So they’re not going to waste it anymore.” “No, they’re going to give it all to you,” she shot back. “And what happens when they need some?” “Then there will still be some left because I made it valuable.” “Valuable to you.” “Valuable to everyone, Astrid.” “It’s you taking advantage of kids dumb enough not to know any better. Sam, you have to put a stop to this.” Sam had drifted away from the conversation, his head full of the music. He snapped back. “She’s right, Albert, this isn’t okay. You didn’t get permission—” “I didn’t think I needed permission to give kids what they want. I mean, I’m not threatening anyone, saying, ‘Give me your toilet paper, give me your batteries.’ I’m just playing some music and saying, ‘If you want to come in and dance, then it’ll cost you.’” “Dude, I respect you being ambitious and all,” Sam said. “But I have to shut this down. You never got permission, even, let alone asked us if it was okay to charge people.” Albert said, “Sam, I respect you more than I can even say. And Astrid, you are way smarter than me. But I don’t see how you have the right to shut me down.” That was it for Sam. “Okay, I tried to be nice. But I am the mayor. I was elected, as you probably remember, since I think you voted for me.” “I did. I’d do it again, man. But Sam, Astrid, you guys are wrong here. This club is about all these kids have that can get them together for a good time. They’re sitting in their homes starving and feeling sad and scared. When they’re dancing, they forget how hungry and sad they are. This is a good thing I’m doing.” Sam stared hard at Albert, a stare that kids in Perdido Beach took seriously. But Albert did not back down. “Sam, how many cantaloupes did Edilio manage to bring back with kids who were rounded up and forced to work?” Albert asked. “Not many,” Sam admitted. “Orc picked a whole truckload of cabbage. Before the zekes figured out how to get at him. Because we paid Orc to work.” “He did it because he’s the world’s youngest alcoholic and you paid him with beer,” Astrid snapped. “I know what you want, Albert. You want to get everything for yourself and be this big, important guy. But you know what? This is a whole new world. We have a chance to make it a better world. It doesn’t have to be about some people getting over on everyone else. It can be fair to everyone.” Albert laughed. “Everyone can be equally hungry. In a week or so, everyone can starve.

Have you seen Sam?” Mary asked. “What do you want with Sam?” “I can’t take care of all those littles with just John to help me.” Howard shrugged. “Who asked you to?” That was too much. Mary was tall and strong. Howard, though a boy, was smaller. Mary took two steps toward him, pushing her face right into his. “Listen, you little worm. If I don’t take care of those kids, they’ll die. Do you understand that? There are babies in there who need to be fed and need to be changed, and I seem to be the only one who realizes it. And there are probably more little kids still in their homes, all alone, not knowing what’s happening, not knowing how to feed themselves, scared to death.” Howard took a step back, tentatively lifted the bat, then let it fall. “What am I supposed to do?” he whined. “You? Nothing. Where’s Sam?” “He took off.” “What do you mean, he took off?” “I mean him and Quinn and Astrid took off.” Mary blinked, feeling stupid and slow. “Who’s in charge?” “You think just because Sam likes to play the big hero every couple years that makes him the guy in charge?” Mary had been on the bus two years ago when the driver, Mr. Colombo, had had his heart attack. She’d had her head in a book, not paying attention, but she had looked up when she felt the bus swerve. By the time she had focused, Sam was guiding the bus onto the shoulder of the road. In the two years that followed, Sam had been so quiet and so modest and so not involved in the social life of the school that Mary had sort of forgotten that moment of heroism. Most people had. And yet she hadn’t even been surprised when it was Sam who had stepped up during the fire. And she had somehow assumed that if anyone was going to be in charge, it would be Sam. She found herself angry with him for not being here now: she needed help. “Go get Orc,” Mary said. “I don’t tell Orc what to do, bitch.” “Excuse me?” she snapped. “What did you just call me?” Howard gulped. “Didn’t mean nothing, Mary.” “Where is Orc?” “I think he’s sleeping.” “Wake him up. I need some help. I can’t stay awake any longer. I need at least two kids who have experience babysitting. And then I need diapers and bottles and nipples and Cheerios and lots of milk.” “Why am I going to do all that?” Mary didn’t have an answer. “I don’t know, Howard,” she said. “Maybe because you’re really not a complete jerk? Maybe you’re really a decent human being?” That earned her a skeptical look and a derisive snort. “Look, kids will do what Orc says,” Mary said. “They’re scared of him. All I’m asking is for Orc to act like Orc.” Howard thought this over. Mary could almost see the wheels spinning in his head. “Forget it,” she said. “I’ll talk to Sam when he gets back.” “Yeah, he’s the big hero, isn’t he?” Howard said, dripping sarcasm. “But hey, where is he? You see him around? I don’t see him around.” “Are you going to help or not? I have to get back.” “All right. I’ll get your stuff, Mary. But you better remember who helped you. You’re working for Orc and me.” “I’m taking care of little kids,” Mary said. “If I’m working for anyone, it’s for them.” “Like I say, you remember who was there when you needed them.” Howard turned on his heel and swaggered away.

Did you throw a rock at my brother?” Astrid yelled, fearless in her outrage. She dropped to her knees beside Little Pete. Sam was halfway across the lawn, moving with a purposeful stride. “What did you do, Panda?” “He was ignoring me,” Panda said. “Panda was just goofing, Sam,” Quinn said. He stepped between Sam and Panda. “Throwing a rock at a defenseless little kid is just goofing?” Sam demanded. “And what are you doing hanging with this creep, anyway?” “Who you calling a creep?” Panda demanded. He took a tighter grip on his baseball bat, but not really like he meant to start swinging. “Who do I call a creep? Anyone who throws a rock at a little kid,” Sam said, not backing down. Quinn raised his hands, playing the peacemaker. “Look, take a breath, brah. We were just on a little mission for Mother Mary. She drafted Panda and sent him to look for some little kid’s stuffed bear, okay? We were doing a good thing.” “Doing good and stealing someone’s stuff?” Sam pointed at the trash bag in Chris’s grip. “And on the way back, you figured you’d throw a rock and hit an autistic kid?

What’s Albert going to do?” a boy named Jim demanded. “Where’s Albert?” Albert stepped from an inconspicuous position off to one side. He mounted the steps, moving carefully still, not entirely well even now. He carefully chose a position equidistant between Caine and Sam. “What should we do, Albert?” a voice asked plaintively. Albert didn’t look out at the crowd except for a quick glance up, like he was just making sure he was pointed in the right direction. He spoke in a quiet, reasonable monotone. Kids edged closer to hear. “I’m a businessman.” “True.” Toto. “My job is organizing kids to work, taking the things they harvest or catch, and redistributing them through a market.” “And getting the best stuff for yourself,” someone yelled to general laughter. “Yes,” Albert acknowledged. “I reward myself for the work I do.” This blunt admission left the crowd nonplussed. “Caine has promised that if I stay here he won’t interfere. But I don’t trust Caine.” “No, he doesn’t,” Toto agreed. “I do trust Sam. But . . .” And now you could hear a pin drop. “But . . . Sam is a weak leader.” He kept his eyes down. “Sam is the best fighter ever. He’s defended us many times. And he’s the best at figuring out how to survive. But Sam”— Albert now turned to him—“You are too humble. Too willing to step aside. When Astrid and the council sidelined you, you put up with it. I was part of that myself. But you let us push you aside and the council turned out to be useless.” Sam stood stock-still, stone-faced. “Let’s face it, you’re not really the reason things are better here, I am,” Albert said. “You’re way, way braver than me, Sam. And if it’s a battle, you rule. But you can’t organize or plan ahead and you won’t just put your foot down and make things happen.” Sam nodded slightly. It was hard to hear. But far harder was seeing the way the crowd was nodding, agreeing. It was the truth. The fact was he’d let the council run things, stepped aside, and then sat around feeling sorry for himself. He’d jumped at the chance to go off on an adventure and he hadn’t been here to save the town when they needed it. “So,” Albert concluded, “I’m keeping my things here, in Perdido Beach. But there will be free trading of stuff between Perdido Beach and the lake. And Lana has to be allowed to move freely.” Caine bristled at that. He didn’t like Albert laying down conditions. Albert wasn’t intimidated. “I feed these kids,” he said to Caine. “I do it my way.” Caine hesitated, then made a tight little bow of the head. “I want you to say it,” Albert said with a nod toward Toto. Sam saw panic in Caine’s eyes. If he lied now the jig would be up for him. Toto would call him out, Albert would support Sam, and the kids would follow Albert’s lead. Sam wondered if Caine was just starting to realize what Sam had known for some time: if anyone was king, it was neither Sam nor Caine, it was Albert.

Okay, so maybe you are the world’s authority on the art of making butter sculptures of dead presidents’ heads, but if you want to sell a book on the subject you’ll have to do more than know your stuff. You’ll need to make the idea sound sexy, or cool, or hot, or timely, or cute, or something that instantly makes it clear to people why the world needs your book.

It occurred to me that I was suffering from the dizziness of contradictions: the only pleasure that remains once you've decided you know better than the world. Accepting contradictions means not believing any more in the primacy of "true feeling." Everything is true and simultaneously. It's why I hate Sam Shepard and all your True West stuff - it's like analysis, as if the riddle could be solved by digging up the buried child.

As she pulled away from her old life, the phone rang. She clicked the speakerphone on. Sam’s ebullient voice spilled from the speaker. “It’s the same stuff.” “Jesus, you’re there late. Why do you sound so happy? That means he’s definitely killed a fourth.

They enjoyed the usual holiday traditions of a Christmas tree, big family dinner, you know, normal stuff but Amma had one tradition that she insisted be shared with me and all of my cousins, which was Jolabokaflod.” “A what flood?” “It translates to Christmas Book flood,” I said. “In Iceland it’s a tradition to give new books as gifts on Christmas Eve and then spend the evening reading.” “Seriously?” Sam asked. “As a writer and avid reader, I have to say that is awesome.

After pushing the appliances into place, I emptied our hamper into the washer and started a cycle. As the remarkably quiet load finished, I observed that many of Nia’s clothes, particularly her undergarments, appeared old and worn. “Nia,” I stated, holding up a blouse with an obvious hole in it, “This is unacceptable. You need to go out right now and buy yourself some new clothes.” I didn’t have to ask her twice. The next morning, she went out shopping for a new wardrobe with her friends. While she was gone, my friend Erick and I cleaned up the flower beds in front of our house, planting fresh flowers and shrubs. When we were done, the kids and I decorated the driveway with sidewalk chalk, leaving messages of appreciation for Nia. After putting the kids to bed, I cleaned the house, intent on making everything sparkle on her return. With shopping bags draped over her shoulders, Nia approached the front, radiating a happiness and gratitude I hadn’t seen in her since the day before my confessions to her two weeks prior. Her gaze fell upon her new flower bed. “It’s beautiful,” she said. As she entered the house that smelled brand new, she turned to me with misty eyes and said something that overwhelmed me with emotion. “You’ve been so sweet to me,” she said after dropping her bags, covering her face with her hands. I didn’t deserve to hear those words; the things I was doing should have been done long ago, but they immediately brought me to tears. I walked over and wrapped her up as she sobbed into my shoulder. I reassured her of my undying love for her and reminded her that I was no longer the man I had described in my confessions. “I know you may think I’m doing this stuff just to win you back,” I said, “but I hope time will show how much I truly love you.” I wouldn’t need much time at all. An opportunity to demonstrate my physical and emotional faithfulness to her was on the horizon. 33 Shiny Boxes As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.

And you,” she said, looking to Sam. “The best girls are worth waiting for. Trust and friendship come first, then the other stuff. You’re only sixteen, just about to start eleventh grade. And life, hopefully, is long.

In America people like Bobby Womack used to say, “The first time we heard you guys we thought you were black guys. Where did these motherfuckers come from?” I can’t figure that out myself, why Mick and I in that damn town should come up with such a sound—except that if you soak it up in a damp tenement in London all day with the intensity that we did, it ain’t that different from soaking it up in Chicago. That’s all we played, until we actually became it. We didn’t sound English. And I think it surprised us too. Each time we played—and I still do this at certain times—I’d just turn round and say, “Is that noise just coming from him there, and me?” It’s almost as if you’re riding a wild horse. In that respect we’re damn lucky we got to work with Charlie Watts. He was playing very much like black drummers playing with Sam and Dave and the Motown stuff, or the soul drummers. He has that touch.

An old-fashioned architect would tell people what to do. In the new, modern, decentralized organization, architects are surveying the landscape, spotting trends, helping connect people, and acting as a sounding board to help other teams get stuff done. They aren’t a unit of control in this world; they are yet another enabling function (often with a new name—I’ve seen terms like principal engineer used for people playing the role of what I would consider an architect).

died. She got the reputation of being a witch because of these ointments and potions she makes out of stuff she finds in the woods. To be honest, some of them work better than the medicines you get from the doctor, but everybody’s just a little bit afraid of her.

Now, Sam,’ said Frodo, ‘don’t hinder me! The others will be coming back at any minute. If they catch me here, I shall have to argue and explain, and I shall never have the heart or the chance to get off. But I must go at once. It’s the only way.’ ‘Of course it is,’ answered Sam. ‘But not alone. I’m coming too, or neither of us isn’t going. I’ll knock holes in all the boats first.’ Frodo actually laughed. A sudden warmth and gladness touched his heart. ‘Leave one!’ he said. ‘We’ll need it. But you can’t come like this without your gear or food or anything.’ ‘Just hold on a moment, and I’ll get my stuff!’ cried Sam eagerly. ‘It’s all ready. I thought we should be off today.’ He rushed to the camping place, fished out his pack from the pile where Frodo had laid it when he emptied the boat of his companions’ goods, grabbed a spare blanket, and some extra packages of food, and ran back. ‘So all my plan is spoilt!’ said Frodo. ‘It is no good trying to escape you. But I’m glad, Sam. I cannot tell you how glad. Come along! It is plain that we were meant to go together. We will go, and may the others find a safe road! Strider will look after them. I don’t suppose we shall see them again.’ ‘Yet we may, Mr. Frodo. We may,’ said Sam.

He’s a loner who doesn’t want to be alone, grappling with the incubus, a rippling of nocturnal waters, the nausea of unending nights. There are troubling moments of prescience, as he intuits future fragmentation, stoically kicking his way through the shards. He’s just going to keep on living till he dies. Whether he paints himself in a good or bad light is not the point. The point is to lay stuff out, smooth the curling edges.

We’ve got our first ad from the July 29, 1950, Benton County Democrat on display today down at our Wal-Mart Visitors Center. It’s for the Grand Remodeling Sale of Walton’s Five and Dime, promising a whole bunch of good stuff: free balloons for the kids, a dozen clothespins for nine cents, iced tea glasses for ten cents apiece. The folks turned out, and they kept coming. Although we called it Walton’s Five and Dime, it was a Ben Franklin franchise,

Well, why don’t we ever get to talk about what I want to talk about?” I demanded. “Because we have already covered the conversational breadth of guns, tits, and whiskey.” I sniffed, a little more petulant than I would have liked to appear. “I like other stuff.

«Non esistono posti dove non l’ho mai fatto, Sam. Soltanto posti dove non l’ho mai fatto con te.»

We told them everything--well, almost everything. I was saving the stuff I’d found out at the cabin. This was enough for now. Too much actually. Despite having seen our powers in action--my near-transformation and Daniel knocking out the pilot--Corey and Hayley couldn’t seem to process it. Corey kept saying, “Are you sure?” tentatively, as if he didn’t want to insult our intelligence, but he couldn’t help thinking there had to be a logical explanation. Hayley just stared at me. When I finally stopped talking, she said, “Are you crazy?” “Hey!” Sam said. “No, seriously. You think you’re going to change into a cougar? Maybe in thirty years you’ll start thinking college boys are kinda hot, but that’s the only sort of cougar you can turn into, Maya. Anything else is nuts.” “Right,” Sam said. “So you weren’t here an hour ago? When her face started changing?” “Yes, something did happen to her face. I don’t know what it was, but I’ll bet it has to go with those vitamins and drugs they were feeding us back in Salmon Creek. That’s what all this is about. They were doing medical experiments on us. It explains what Daniel did on the helicopter and what happened with Maya’s face.” “And Rafe?” Sam said. “Does medical research explain why Rafe thought he was a skin-walker, too, when he’d never even been to the clinic?” “I…I don’t know.” Hayley squared her shoulders. “No one ever saw Rafe do anything magical. He just thought he was one of these skin-walkers. That’s from your religion or whatever, right?” “My religion?” I said. “The stuff you people believe in.” “You people?” Corey said. “Holy hell, Hayley. Did you really just say that?” She went beet red. “I--I didn’t mean--” “We know exactly what you meant,” Sam said. “Got a racist streak there, huh? Surprise, surprise.

Does medical research explain why Rafe thought he was a skin-walker, too, when he’d never even been to the clinic?” “I…I don’t know.” Hayley squared her shoulders. “No one ever saw Rafe do anything magical. He just thought he was one of these skin-walkers. That’s from your religion or whatever, right?” “My religion?” I said. “The stuff you people believe in.” “You people?” Corey said. “Holy hell, Hayley. Did you really just say that?” She went beet red. “I--I didn’t mean--” “We know exactly what you meant,” Sam said. “Got a racist streak there, huh? Surprise, surprise.

J-Just m-my throat,’ I stuttered, my lips quivering from the cold. ‘Let's get you out of here, then,’ Marcel said. He slid his arms under me and lifted me without effort-like picking up an empty box. His chest was bare and warm; he hunched his shoulders to keep the rain off me. My head lolled over his arm. I stared vacantly back toward the furious water, beating the sand behind him. ‘You got her?’ I heard Sam ask. ‘Yeah, I'll take it from here. Get back to the hospital. I'll join you later. Thanks, Sam.’ My head was still rolling. None of his words sunk in at first. Sam didn't answer. There was no sound, and I wondered if he were already gone. The water licked and writhed up the sand after us as Marcel carried me away like it was angry that I'd escaped. As I stared wearily, a spark of color caught my unfocused eyes-a a small flash of fire was dancing on the black water, far out in the bay. The image made no sense, and I wondered how conscious I was. My head swirled with the memory of the black, churning water of being so lost that I couldn't find up or down. So, lost… but somehow Marcel… ‘How did you find me?’ I rasped. ‘I was searching for you,’ he told me. He was half-jogging through the rain, up the beach toward the road. ‘I followed the tire tracks to your truck, and then I heard you scream…’ He shuddered. ‘Why would you jump, Bell? Didn't you notice that it's turning into a hurricane out here? Couldn't you have waited for me?’ Anger filled his tone as the relief faded. ‘Sorry,’ I muttered. ‘It was stupid.’ ‘Yeah, it was really stupid,’ he agreed, drops of rain shaking free of his hair as he nodded. ‘Look, do you mind saving the stupid stuff for when I'm around? I won't be able to concentrate if I think you're jumping off cliffs behind my back.’ ‘Sure,’ I agreed. ‘No problem.’ I sounded like a chain-smoker. I tried to clear my throat and then winced; the throat-clearing felt like stabbing a knife down there. ‘What happened today? Did you… find her?’ It was my turn to shudder, though I wasn't so cold here, right next to his ridiculous body heat. Marcel shook his head. He was still more running than walking as he headed up the road to his house. ‘No. She took off into the water-the bloodsuckers have the advantage there. That's why I raced home- I was afraid she was going to double back swimming. You spend so much time on the beach…’ He trailed off, a catch in his throat. ‘Sam came back with you… is everyone else home, too?’ I hoped they weren’t still out searching for her. ‘Yeah. Sort of.’ I tried to read his expression, squinting into the hammering rain. His eyes were tight with worry or pain. The words that hadn't made sense before suddenly did. ‘You said… hospital. Before, to Sam. Is someone hurt? Did she fight you?’ My voice jumped up an octave, sounding strange with the hoarseness. Marcel’s eyes tightened again. ‘It doesn't look so great right now.’ Abruptly, I felt sick with guilt-felt truly horrible about the brainless cliff dive. Nobody needed to be worrying about me right now. What a stupid time to be reckless. ‘What can I do?’ I asked. At that moment the rain stopped. I hadn't realized we were already back at Marcel’s house until he walked through the door. The storm pounded against the roof. ‘You can stay here,’ Marcel said as he dumped me on the short couch. ‘I mean it right here I'll get you some dry clothes.’ I let my eyes adjust to the darkroom while Marcel banged around in his bedroom. The cramped front room seemed so empty without Billy, almost desolate. It was strangely ominous-probably just because I knew where he was. Marcel was back in seconds. He threw a pile of gray cotton at me. ‘These will be huge on you, but it's the best I've got. I'll-a, step outside so you can change.’ ‘Don't go anywhere. I'm too tired to move yet. Just stay with me.

I get it, Sam. Stuff you say bothers me, it isn’t as important as stuff I say that might bother you. Do I have that right?” “You’ve had two lovers, him and me. He gave you nothin’ for as long as you had him in your bed. You do not get nothin’ from me. I get to show you that. I get to give you that, and not even my first when I was sixteen was my first to give that to. It means somethin’ to me that when my mouth or my cock or my fingers are between your legs and I know what your face looks like, I know what you’re feelin’, I know I’m the only man who ever gave that to you, and that’s all for me. That means somethin’ to me, Kia. And you throwin’ out you’d spread your legs for someone else and take that from me, that isn’t just ‘stuff that bothers me.’ It’s a fuckuva lot more.

Did she ask about anyone else?” “Oh, everyone,” Brendan said, rushing on. “Names, friendships, hobbies. She was really interested in our hobbies. When we talked about the teams and stuff, she asked why Rafe and Sam aren’t on any. I said Rafe just moved here, and I don’t know what he’s into.” “And me?” Sam said. “I said you’re antisocial.” “Thanks.” “She asked whether you were good at any of the school’s specialties--singing, track, swimming, wrestling…I said all I know is you like to hit people.” She flipped him the finger. “What? It’s true. Then she asked if they let girls on the boxing team and I said Mr. Barnes tried to get you on it, but you weren’t interested. Then--get this--she starts asking if you’ve got a hate-on for certain people.” Sam looked worried, almost alarmed, but when she saw me watching, she tried to hide it and said, “So what’d you tell her?” “That you’re an equal opportunity hater.

When we talked about the teams and stuff, she asked why Rafe and Sam aren’t on any. I said Rafe just moved here, and I don’t know what he’s into.” “And me?” Sam said. “I said you’re antisocial.

When we talked about the teams and stuff, she asked why Rafe and Sam aren’t on any. I said Rafe just moved here, and I don’t know what he’s into.” “And me?” Sam said. “I said you’re antisocial.” “Thanks.” “She asked whether you were good at any of the school’s specialties--singing, track, swimming, wrestling…I said all I know is you like to hit people.” She flipped him the finger. “What? It’s true.

When we talked about the teams and stuff, she asked why Rafe and Sam aren’t on any. I said Rafe just moved here, and I don’t know what he’s into.” “And me?” Sam said. “I said you’re antisocial.” “Thanks.” “She asked whether you were good at any of the school’s specialties--singing, track, swimming, wrestling…I said all I know is you like to hit people.

But what aren't you doing already? What more can you possibly do?’ ‘I guess he means the team stuff’, I said. ‘The bonding. The camaraderie I've never really been –‘. ‘Don't start judging yourself’, she said sharply. ‘Don't start seeing yourself in the light of those kinds of standards.’ ‘No, but it's true. There's always been the part of work I've struggled with, the unquestioning side. The feeling of joining in. I've always tried to do it at this kind of remove. Maybe what he's saying is –‘ ‘Of course you've done it at a remove. How else are you supposed to do it and still be you?’ ‘But maybe those days are gone’, I said. ‘Maybe I have to accept that. Maybe there just won't be those kind of jobs anymore - the ones where you can roll out of bed and staggering without speaking to anyone and keep your head down and just do it, you know? maybe this is what work is, now’ […] ‘Definitely. Simple tasks can be automated. They've already almost got the machine learning to do what you do. It's about what else a human can bring to the table, which is, literally, their humanity.’ It was possible, I realised, to imagine. A semi-global future in which the bulk of paid human employment would revolve not around hard skills, but around the messy, blurry business of interpersonal success. A new divide would open up, between the well liked, The easy to get along with, and the awkward, The rude, the unfriendly. I pictured the encampment on which I had lived, filled not as it was then, with migrants, unfortunates, hard drinkers, the out of luck. But instead, the abrasive, the poorly adjusted, the excessively reserved and painfully shy. (p.136-7)

Maya’s point is that Hayley, Nicole, and Serena shared common characteristics, which probably means they’re the same type, and it has something to do with singing and swimming.” “And being pretty,” Hayley said. “That’s not a superpower,” Sam muttered. Hayley turned to her. “No? How many times have you gotten into movies for free because you’re a tough warrior chick?” “What about me?” Corey said. “What’s my superpower?” Silence fell. “Oh, come on. I’m good at a lot of stuff. Right?” More silence. “You’re cute,” Hayley said. “Well, cute enough.” “Fun to be around,” I offered. “So I’m…a clown?” “At least you’re a cute clown,” Hayley said. “Not a scary one.” “You’re a good fighter,” Daniel said. “And you’re a good drinker,” Hayley added. “You can hold your liquor better than anyone I know.” “Uh-huh,” Corey said. “So Maya will grow up to be an amazing healer who can change into a killer cat. Daniel and Sam will roam the country hunting criminals and demons. Hayley and Nicole will divide their time between recording platinum albums and winning gold medals in swimming. And me? I’ll be the cute, funny guy sitting at the bar, hoping for a good brawl to break out.” “In other words, exactly where you were already headed,” Hayley said. We all laughed at that, even Corey. We had to. For now, this was the best way to deal with it. Tease. Poke fun. As if we were comparing Halloween costumes. Look, I’m a superhero. Yeah? Well, so am I. “I’m sure you have powers,” I said. “You’re just a late bloomer.” “Thanks…I think.

Maya’s point is that Hayley, Nicole, and Serena shared common characteristics, which probably means they’re the same type, and it has something to do with singing and swimming.” “And being pretty,” Hayley said. “That’s not a superpower,” Sam muttered. Hayley turned to her. “No? How many times have you gotten into movies for free because you’re a tough warrior chick?” “What about me?” Corey said. “What’s my superpower?” Silence fell. “Oh, come on. I’m good at a lot of stuff. Right?” More silence.