Track Mom Quotes

You realize that you habitually thought of Mom when something in your life was not going well, because when you thought of her it was as though something got back on track, and you felt re-energized.

people used to tell me that i had beautiful hands told me so often, in fact, that one day i started to believe them until i asked my photographer father, “hey daddy could i be a hand model” to which he said no way, i dont remember the reason he gave me and i wouldve been upset, but there were far too many stuffed animals to hold too many homework assignment to write, too many boys to wave at too many years to grow, we used to have a game, my dad and i about holding hands cus we held hands everywhere, and every time either he or i would whisper a great big number to the other, pretending that we were keeping track of how many times we had held hands that we were sure, this one had to be 8 million 2 thousand 7 hundred and fifty three. hands learn more than minds do, hands learn how to hold other hands, how to grip pencils and mold poetry, how to tickle pianos and dribble a basketball, and grip the handles of a bicycle how to hold old people, and touch babies , i love hands like i love people, they're the maps and compasses in which we navigate our way through life, some people read palms to tell your future, but i read hands to tell your past, each scar marks the story worth telling, each calloused palm, each cracked knuckle is a missed punch or years in a factory, now ive seen middle eastern hands clenched in middle eastern fists pounding against each other like war drums, each country sees theyre fists as warriors and others as enemies. even if fists alone are only hands. but this is not about politics, no hands arent about politics, this is a poem about love, and fingers. fingers interlock like a beautiful zipper of prayer. one time i grabbed my dads hands so that our fingers interlocked perfectly but he changed positions, saying no that hand hold is for your mom. kids high five, but grown ups, we learn how to shake hands, you need a firm hand shake,but dont hold on too tight, but dont let go too soon, but dont hold down for too long, but hands are not about politics, when did it become so complicated. i always thought its simple. the other day my dad looked at my hands, as if seeing them for the first time, and with laughter behind his eye lids, with all the seriousness a man of his humor could muster, he said you know you got nice hands, you could’ve been a hand model, and before the laughter can escape me, i shake my head at him, and squeeze his hand, 8 million 2 thousand 7hundred and fifty four.

See, the thing is I didn't think that that song would get much attention because it's such a personal song to me. I just wrote it about my childhood, and I didn't know how that would read on an album. But it's been everybody's favorite song. I didn't tell my mom. It was a total secret. So I wrote it in secret and then decided to record it secretly, so she had no idea that the song was recorded. My producers sent me the track and I synched it up to all my baby videos and I played it for her one Christmas Eve, and she bawled her eyes out. She didn't even think that it was my song. She didn't think there was any way for me to record a song without her knowing.

Well, I’ve been a musician my whole life. When I was two, I would sing the theme from Star Wars in my crib; my mom taped it for proof. Then, when I was five, I asked for a violin. No one knew why I would want one, but my wish was granted and I ended up a classically trained fiddler by age 12. The only problem with that was, when you’re a classical violinist, everybody expects you to be satisfied with playing Tchaikovsky for the rest of your life, and saying you want to play jazz, rock, write songs, sing your songs, hook up your fiddle to a guitar amp, sleep with your 4-track recorder, mess around with synths, dress like Tinkerbell in combat boots, AND play Tchaikovsky is equivalent to spitting on the Pope.

All of them had been give a makeover. Leo was wearing pinstriped pants, black leather shoes, a white collarless shirt with suspenders, and his tool belt, Ray-Ban sunglasses, and a porkpie hat. “God, Leo.” Piper tried not to laugh. “I think my dad wore that to his last premiere, minus the tool belt.” “Hey, shut up!” “I think he looks good,” said Coach Hedge. “’Course, I look better.” The satyr was a pastel nightmare. Aphrodite had given him a baggy canary yellow zoot suit with two-tone shoes that fit over his hooves. He had a matching yellow broad-brimmed hat, a rose-colored shirt, a baby blue tie, and a blue carnation in his lapel, which Hedge sniffed and then ate. “Well,” Jason said, “at least your mom overlooked me.” Piper knew that wasn’t exactly true. Looking at him, her heart did a little tap dance. Jason was dressed simply in jeans and a clean purple T-shirt, like he’d worn at the Grand Canyon. He had new track shoes on, and his hair was newly trimmed. His eyes were the same color as the sky. Aphrodite’s message was clear: This one needs no improvement. And Piper agreed.

We walk until there aren't more houses, all the way to the part of the beach where the current makes the waves come in then rush back out so that the two waves clash, water casting up like a geyser. We watch that for a while and then Scottie says, "I wish Mom was here." I'm thinking the exact same thought. That's how you know you love someone, I guess, when you can't experience anything without wishing the other person were there to see it, too. Every day I kept track of anecdotes, occurrences, and gossip, bullet-pointing the news in my head and even rehearsing my stories before telling them to Joanie in bed at night.

It’s a widely known fact that most moms are ready to kill someone by eight thirty A.M. on any given morning. On the particular morning of Tuesday, October eighth, I was ready by seven forty-five. If you’ve never had to wrestle a two-year-old slathered in maple syrup into a diaper while your four-year-old decides to give herself a haircut in time for preschool, all while trying to track down the whereabouts of your missing nanny as you sop up coffee grounds from an overflowing pot because in your sleep-deprived fog you forgot to put in the filter, let me spell it out for you. I was ready to kill someone. I didn’t really care who.

I would think you’d have better things to do right now than look up the marital status of my ex-boyfriends on the Internet,” Mom had said to him, scathingly. “I like to keep track of their mating habits,” Dad had smirked.

There must have been a real mess on the tracks,’ Lorna said, ‘They shut down the F train line for a whole two hours for you. Two hours! And in rush hour!’ My final achievement. Man, I hoped Mom was getting that put on my gravestone. Here lies Charlotte Feldman. She pissed off commuters. A lot.

Of course I work,” she said. “I’m a mom.” But I was a mom, too, so what was what I did called?) But also: No one had to tell me it was harder to have a job and be a mother. It was obvious. It was two full-time occupations. It’s just math. Because having a job made you no less of a mother; you still had to do all that shit, too. Keeping track of your kids from afar isn’t easier. Entrusting them to a stranger who was available for babysitting by virtue of the fact that she was incapable of doing anything else is not something that fills a person with faith and relaxation. Now that I have worked and stayed at home, I can confirm all of this. Now that I stay at home, I can say it out loud. But now that I don’t work, no one is listening. No one listens to stay-at-home mothers, which, I guess, is why we were so careful about their feelings in the first place.

Even when I encountered racism outside Salmon Creek, it usually rolled off me. The worst of it often came from rednecks whipping past in rusted pickups. I looked at them and I looked at me-class leader, track star, straight-A student- and their slurs about dirty Indians and drunk Indians and dumb Indians were laughable. Mom says crap like that comes from people who´ve accomplished so little in lifethat they feel the need to lift themselves above someone, anyone. So they pick skin color or religion or sexual orientation and say, "Well, I might not be much, but at least I´m not a ..." I´d look at those guys, and see the truth of her words.

Your dad was in a street gang?" My adopted dad was an accountant for a big Fortune 500 corporation. Him, me, and my adopted mom lived in the suburbs in an English Tudor house with a gigantic basement where he fiddled with model trains. The other dads were lawyers and research chemists, but they all ran model trains. Every weekend they could, they'd load into a family van and cruise into the city for research. Snapping pictures of gang members. Gang graffiti. Sex workers walking their tracks. Litter and pollution and homeless heroin addicts. All this, they'd study and bicker about, trying to outdo each other with the most realistic, the grittiest scenes of urban decay they could create in HO train scale in a subdivision basement

Why Do People become Shadowhunters, by Magnus Bane This Codex thing is very silly. Downworlders talk about the Codex like it is some great secret full of esoteric knowledge, but really itès a Boy Scout manual. One thing that it mysteriously doesnèt address is why people become Shadowhunters. And you should know that people become Shadowhunters for many stupid reasons. So here is an addition to your copy. Greetings, aspiring young Shadowhunter-to-be- or possibly already technically a Shadowhunter. I canèt remember whether you drink from the Cup first or get the book first. Regardless, you have just been recruited by the Monster Police. You may be wondering, why? Why of all the mundanes out there was I selected and invited to this exclusive club made up largely, at least from a historical perspective, of murderous psychopaths? Possible Reasons Why 1. You possess a stout heart, strong will, and able body. 2. You possess a stout body, able will, and strong heart. 3. Local Shadowhunters are ironically punishing you by making you join them. 4. You were recruited by a local institute to join the Nephilim as an ironic punishment for your mistreatment of Downworlders. 5. Your home , village, or nation is under siege by demons. 6. You home, village, or nation is under siege by rogue Downworlders. 7. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time. 8.You know too much, and should be recruited because the secrecy of the Shadow World has already been compromised for you. 9. You know too little; it would be helpful to the Shadowhunters if you knew more. 10. You know exactly the right amount, making you a natural recruit. 11. You possess a natural resistance to glamour magic and must be recruited to keep you quiet and provide you with some basic protection. 12. You have a compound last name already and have convinced someone important that yours is a Shadowhunter family and the Shadowhunteriness has just been weakened by generations of bad breeding. 13. You had a torrid affair with a member of the Nephilim council and now he's trying to cover his tracks. 14. Shadowhunters are concerned they are no longer haughty and condescending enough-have sought you out to add a much needed boost of haughty condescension. 15. You have been bitten by a radioactive Shadowhunter, giving you the proportional strength and speed of a Shadowhunter. 16. Large bearded man on flying motorcycle appeared to take you away to Shadowhunting school. 17. Your mom has been in hiding from your evil dad, and you found out you're a Shadowhunter only a few weeks ago. That's right. Seventeen reasons. Because that's how many I came up with. Now run off, little Shadowhunter, and learn how to murder things. And be nice to Downworlders.

I should probably introduce myself. My name is Patina Jones. And I ain’t no junk. I also ain’t no hair flipper. And most of the girls at Chester Academy are hair flippers who be looking at me like my mom some kind of junk maker.

My mom’s smile is genuine, A lilac beaming In the presence of her Sun. Indentions in the sand prove Time’s linear progression, Her hair yet unblighted, Carrying midnight’s consistency. Clear tracks fading as the Movement slips further In the past. Cheekbones High, soft, In summer’s hue, Hopeful. Each step’s unknown impact, A future looking back. My father’s strength: One whose Life is in his arms. Squinting past the camera, He rests upon a rock Like caramel corn half eaten, Just to the left Of man-made concrete convention Daylight’s eraser Removing color to his right. Dustin sits In my father’s lap, Open mouth of a drooling Big mouth bass; Muscle tone Of a well exercised Jelly fish, He looks at me Half aware; His wheelchair Perched at the edge Of parking lot gravel grafted Like a scar on nature’s beach, Opening to the ironic splendor Of a bitter tasting lake. I took the picture. Age 11. Capturing the pinnacle arc Of a son To my lilac Who Outlived him and weeps, Still. Their sky has staple holes – Maybe that’s how the Light Leaked out.

Nightbitch resolved to demand things- all sorts of things. To ask. To not assume she had to cook the dinner and do the night-nights and clean the house and pay the bills and buy the presents and send the cards and schedule to appointments and keep track of every last thing all by herself. This was, after all, a partnership, wasn’t it? This was, after all, the modern era, empowerment and feminism and all that, and she had not been taking advantage of any of it because, she discovered as she thought further, she did not have a job. Or, rather, she did not have a job that paid any money whatsoever; in fact, it was a drain on money, represented negative money, this mothering job. Because her husband paid for their lives, paid for the privilege she had of staying home each and every day devoting herself completely to motherhood and nothing else, she had felt, ever since she stepped down from her position at the gallery, that she was in no place to demand anything, He worked all week, and she felt it was too much to ask him to lift a finger on the weekend, because she had automatically devalued her work from the start. She had been, she saw now, inculcated by a culture that told her, Look, it’s cute you’re a mom, and go do your thing, but, honestly, it’s not that hard; you’re probably not all that smart or interesting , but good for you for feeling fulfilled by mothering.

There was an old joke. Miller didn’t remember where he’d heard it. Girl’s at her own father’s funeral, meets this really cute guy. They talk, hit it off, but he leaves before she can get his number. Girl doesn’t know how to track the guy down. So a week later, she kills her mom. Big laugh.

There was an old joke. Miller didn't remember where he'd heard it. Girl's at her own father's funeral, meets this really cute guy. They talk, hit it off, but he leaves before she can get his number. Girl doesn't know how to track the guy down. So a week later, she kills her mom. Big laugh.

When I was a kid, summers were the most glorious time of life. Because my parents believed in hands-off, free-range parenting, I’d usually be out the door before ten and wouldn’t return until dinner. There were no cell phones to keep track of me and whenever my mom called a neighbor to ask where I was, the neighbor was often just as clueless as to her own child’s whereabouts. In fact, there was only one rule as far as I could tell: I had to be home at half past five, since my parents liked to eat dinner as a family. I can’t remember exactly how I used to spend those days. I have recollections in snapshot form: building forts or playing king of the hill on the high part of the jungle gym or chasing after a soccer ball while attempting to score. I remember playing in the woods, too. Back then, our home was surrounded by undeveloped land, and my friends and I would have dirt-clod wars or play capture the flag; when we got BB guns, we could spend hours shooting cans and occasionally shooting at each other. I spent hours exploring on my bicycle, and whole weeks would pass where I’d wake every morning with nothing scheduled at all. Of course, there were kids in the neighborhood who didn’t lead that sort of carefree existence. They would head off to camp or participate in summer leagues for various sports, but back then, kids like that were the minority. These days, kids are scheduled from morning to night because parents have demanded it, and London has been no exception. But how did it happen? And why? What changed the outlook of parents in my generation? Peer pressure? Living vicariously through a child’s success? Résumé building for college? Or was it simply fear that if their kids were allowed to discover the world on their own, nothing good would come of it? I don’t know. I am, however, of the opinion that something has been lost in the process: the simple joy of waking in the morning and having nothing whatsoever to do.

Footsteps from the stairwell startle him out of the past. He turns around as Emma's mother takes the last step into the dining area, Emma right behind her. Mrs. McIntosh glides over and puts her arm around him. The smile on her face is genuine, but Emma's smile is more like a straight line. And she's blushing. "Galen, it's very nice to meet you," she says, ushering him into the kitchen. "Emma tells me you're taking her to the beach behind your house today. To swim?" "Yes, ma'am." Her transformation makes him wary. She smiles. "Well, good luck with getting her in the water. Since I'm a little pressed for time, I can't follow you over there, so I just need to see your driver's license while Emma runs outside to get your plate number." Emma rolls her eyes as she shuffles through a drawer and pulls out a pen and paper. She slams the door behind her when she leaves, which shakes the dishes on the wall. Galen nods, pulls out his wallet, and hands over the fake license. Mrs. McIntosh studies it and rummages through her purse until she produces a pen-which she uses to write on her hand. “Just need your license number in case we ever have any problems. But we’re not going to have any problems, are we, Galen? Because you’ll always have my daughter-my only daughter-home on time, isn’t that right?” He nods, then swallows. She holds out his license. When he accepts it, she grabs his wrist, pulling him close. She glances at the garage door and back to him. “Tell me right now, Galen Forza. Are you or are you not dating my daughter?” Great. She still doesn’t believe Emma. If she won’t believe them anyway, why keep trying to convince her? If she thinks they’re dating, the time he intends to spend with Emma will seem normal. But if they spend time together and tell her they’re not dating, she’ll be nothing but suspicious. Possibly even spy on them-which is less than ideal. So, dating Emma is the only way to make sure she mates with Grom. Things just get better and better. “Yes,” he says. “We’re definitely dating.” She narrows her eyes. “Why would she tell me you’re not?” He shrugs. “Maybe she’s ashamed of me.” To his surprise, she chuckles. “I seriously doubt that, Galen Forza.” Her humor is short lived. She grabs a fistful of his T-shirt. “Are you sleeping with her?” Sleeping…Didn’t Rachel say sleeping and mating are the same thing? Dating and mating are similar. But sleeping and mating are the same exact same. He shakes his head. “No, ma’am.” She raises a no-nonsense brow. “Why not? What’s wrong with my daughter?” That is unexpected. He suspects this woman can sense a lie like Toraf can track Rayna. All she’s looking for is honesty, but the real truth would just get him arrested. I’m crazy about your daughter-I’m just saving her for my brother. So he seasons his answer with the frankness she seems to crave. “There’s nothing wrong with your daughter, Mrs. McIntosh. I said we’re not sleeping together. I didn’t say I didn’t want to.” She inhales sharply and releases him. Clearing her throat, she smoothes out his wrinkled shirt with her hand, then pats his chest. “Good answer, Galen. Good answer.” Emma flings open the garage door and stops short. “Mom, what are you doing?” Mrs. McIntosh steps away and stalks to the counter. “Galen and I were just chitchatting. What took you so long?” Galen guesses her ability to sense a lie probably has something to do with her ability to tell one. Emma shoots him a quizzical look, but he returns a casual shrug. Her mother grabs a set of keys from a hook by the refrigerator and nudges her daughter out of the way, but not before snatching the paper out of her hand.

We had to not say those things so that we could tiptoe around all the feelings of inadequacy that we projected onto the stay-at-home mothers; in fact, you couldn’t even ask a woman you suspected of stay-at-homery what she did because there was no not-awkward way to ask it. (“Do you work?” I once asked a woman back when I had a job. “Of course I work,” she said. “I’m a mom.” But I was a mom, too, so what was what I did called?) But also: No one had to tell me it was harder to have a job and be a mother. It was obvious. It was two full-time occupations. It’s just math. Because having a job made you no less of a mother; you still had to do all that shit, too. Keeping track of your kids from afar isn’t easier.

We've reached a point in human history where higher education no longer works. As a result of technology, higher education in its traditional college setting no longer works. It will never be effective or progressive enough to keep up with the growing needs of employers who look to college institutions for their future employees. I can appreciate the good intent the college system set out to achieve. For previous generations, the formula actually worked. Students enrolled into universities that were affordable, they gained marketable skills and they earned good jobs. Since there was a proven track record of success, parents instilled the value of college in their children thinking they would achieve the same success story they did, but unfortunately Wall Street was watching. Wall Street, the federal government and the college system ganged up and skyrocketed the cost of tuition to record highs. This was easy to do because not only did they have posters blanketing high schools showing kids what a loser they would be if they didn't go to college, they also had Mom and Dad at home telling them the same thing. This system - spending 4+ years pursuing a college education when the world is changing at the speed of light - no longer works and it's not fixable. We now have the biggest employer's market in human history, where employers have their pick of the litter, and because of this employees will get paid less and less and benefits will continue to erode.

Talking about your crazy spots not only saves your daughter the work of trying to change your fully formed personality, it also builds her emotional intelligence. In its more basic form, your daughter’s emotional intelligence will help her to consider competing mental states. But when you teach her about your crazy spots, you are taking her emotional intelligence up several notches: you are inviting her to think about your motivations in a broad perspective that includes past experiences and relationships. By encouraging her to expand her insight beyond what’s happening in the moment, you’ll advance your daughter from varsity level emotional intelligence (“Why does Mom act psychotic when I track mud through the house?”) to the pros (“Mom acts psychotic because she didn’t have to share her space when she was growing up, so she doesn’t always handle it well now”).

But if you’re two guys like us, riding the Bronx tracks, you better make sure you hide any sign of affection if you want to fly under the radar. I’ve known this for the longest—I just hoped it wouldn’t matter. Someone whistles at us and I instantly knew I was wrong. These two guys who were competing in a pull-up contest a few minutes ago walk up to us. The taller one with his jeans leg rolled up asks, “Yo. You two homos faggots?” We both tell him no. His friend, who smells like straight-up armpits, presses his middle finger between Collin’s eyes. He sucks his teeth. “They lying. I bet their little dicks are getting hard right now.” Collin smacks the dude’s hand, which is just as big a mistake as my mom trying to save me from being thrown out the house last night. “Fuck you.” Nightmare after nightmare. One slams my head into the railing, and the other hammers Collin with punches. I try punching the first guy in his nose, but I’m too dizzy and miss. I have no idea how many times he punches me or at what point I end up on the sticky floor with Collin trying to shield me before he’s kicked to the side. Collin turns to me, crying these involuntary tears from shock and pain. His kind brown eyes roll back when he’s kicked in the head. I cry out for help but no one fucking breaks up the fight. No one fucking does the right thing. The train stops and the doors open but there’s no chance for escape. For us, at least.

Kai’s kids had great manners and were fairly quiet. Athos was smart, ambitious, and determined. Will’s children never fought him on anything. They did what they were told the first time he asked. My kids… But I stopped the thought in its tracks, remembering Ivar helping his mom make pancakes this morning. My kids could be really sweet, actually, couldn’t they? Gunnar was so good about helping with spills, so his mom wouldn’t slip. Fane helped her pick out books at the store for Dag and Octavia, describing the pictures and story, so she knew what to buy.

When I was maybe five or six years old, a woman down the street...got flattened by a train. When I got older I realized it probably wasn't an accident. It was a late train and she was so sick and swollen with age she could barely move, so what the hell was she doing crossing the tracks at midnight on a Tuesday? But at the time my mom only said that God works in mysterious ways. AKA, God will make a pancake of a sick old woman who never did harm to anybody, so what do you think he'll do to you if you don't clean your room and brush your teeth and mind your gospel?

There are so many things to remember, and I guess what ultimately stresses me out is the idea that other moms—at school or out there in the wild world—are somehow way better at keeping track of this than I am. I am one of the most organized people I have ever met, and even with all of my planning, I still am constantly forgetting things—or remembering them at midnight the night before they’re due. And no matter what I do or create or volunteer for, some mythical “other mom” at school has done it better. “Yes, Mommy, you can buy the T-shirt we need for make-your-own-T-shirt day, but Liam’s mom grew organic cotton plants. Then she hand-separated the seed from the fiber before spinning it into thread and fabric for the shirt she sewed him herself.” I can’t even begin to keep up, and the stress of trying to do so can make me crazy. So this year I made a big decision. I’m over it. I am utterly over the idea of crushing back-to-school time—or any other part of school for that matter! I do some parts of it well. Our morning routine might be choreographed chaos, but we are never late to school. My kids (with the exception of the four-year-old) are well groomed and well mannered, and they get good grades. Beyond that, they are good people—the kind of kids who befriend the outcasts and the loners. Sure, they attack each other at home and are dramatic enough about their lack of access to technology to earn themselves Oscars, but whatever. We are doing pretty good—and pretty good is way better than trying to fake perfection any day of the week.

My mother never seemed to listen to much music, but she loved Barbara Streisand, counting The Way We Were and Yentl as two of her favorite films. I remembered how we used to sing the song "Tell Him" together, and skipped through the album until I found it on track four. "Remember this?" I laughed, turning up the volume. It's a duet between Babe and Celine Dion, two powerhouse divas joining together for one epic track. Celine plays the role of a young woman afraid to confess her feelings to the man she loves, and Barbara is her confidant, encouraging her to take the plunge. "I'm scared, so afraid to show I care... Will he think me weak, if I tremble when I speak?" Celine begins. When I was a kid my mother used to quiver her lower lip for dramatic effect when she sang the word "tremble." We would trade verses in the living room. I was Barbara and she was Celine, the two of us adding interpretive dance and yearning facial expressions to really sell it. "I've been there, with my heart out in my hand..." I'd join in, a trail of chimes punctuating my entrance. "But what you must understand, you can't let the chance to love him pass you by!" I'd exclaim, prancing from side to side, raising my hand to urge my voice upward, showcasing my exaggerated vocal range. Then, together, we'd join in triumphantly. "Tell him! Tell him that the sun and moon rise in his eyes! Reach out to him!" And we'd ballroom dance in a circle along the carpet, staring into each other's eyes as we crooned along to the chorus. My mom let out a soft giggle from the passenger seat and we sang quietly the rest of the way home. Driving out past the clearing just as the sun went down, the scalloped clouds flushed with a deep orange that made it look like magma.

Mom, I have such a sad life. Don't I have a sad life, Mom?' I muster all the conviction I can, and I say, 'Sammy, we are going to figure this out. We're going to try a new medicine, and you are going to get better. It's going to take us a while more, but we are going to get there. I promise you.' 'But, Mom, what if we don't'- he pauses - 'get ?' He says this with tears making tracks on his cheeks. The cheeks I want to take in my hands and smother with kisses filled with love. The kisses that will push away the hurt. The cheeks I cannot touch, or he will have to do another round of compulsions. The cheeks I love with all my heart, with every inch of me, because they are my darling son's and it is killing me to see him in such pain. 'Sammy, we will get there. I promise. We will figure this out, and we will get there.' I am standing there saying things to him that I'm not sure I believe. I want to believe what I'm saying, but I just don't know anymore. I have to believe it, though, for him.

How did you find me?" "I've followed you for a long time." He must have mistaken the look on my face for alarm or fear, and said, "Not literally. I just mean I never lost track." But it wasn't fear, or anything like that. It was an instant of realization I'd have a lot in the coming days: I'd been thinking of him as coming back from the dead, but the fact was he'd been there all along. He'd been alive when I cried in my room over him being gone. He'd been alive when I started a new school without him, the day I made my first friend a Jones Hall, the time I ran into Ethan at the library. Cameron Quick and I had existed simultaneously on the planet during all of those moments. It didn't seem possible that we could have been leading separate lives, not after everything we'd been through together. "...then I looked you up online," he was saying, "and found your mom's wedding announcement from before you changed your name. I didn't even need to do that. It's easy to find someone you never lost." I struggled to understand what he was saying. "You mean...you could have written to me, or seen me, sooner?" "I wanted to. Almost did, a bunch of times." "Why didn't you? I wish you had." And I did, I wished it so much, imagined how it would have been to know all those years that he was there, thinking of me. "Things seemed different for you," he said, matter-of-fact. "Better. I could tell that from the bits of information I found...like an interview with the parents who were putting their kids in your school when it first started. Or an article about that essay contest you won a couple years ago." "You knew about that?" He nodded. "That one had a picture. I could see just from looking at you that you had a good thing going. Didn't need me coming along and messing it up." "Don't say that," I said quickly. Then: "You were never part of what I wanted to forget." "Nice of you to say, but I know it's not true." I knew what he was thinking, could see that he'd been carrying around the same burden all those years as me. "You didn't do anything wrong." It was getting cold on the porch, and late, and the looming topic scared me. I got up. "Let's go in. I can make coffee or hot chocolate or something?" "I have to go." "No! Already?" I didn't want to let him out of my sight. "Don't worry," he said. "Just have to go to work. I'll be around." "Give me your number. I'll call you." "I don't have a phone right now." "Find me at school," I said, "or anytime. Eat lunch with us tomorrow." He didn't answer. "Really," I continued, "you should meet my friends and stuff." "You have a boyfriend," he finally said. "I saw you guys holding hands." I nodded. "Ethan." "For how long?" "Three months, almost." I couldn't picture Cameron Quick dating anyone, though he must have at some point. If I'd found Ethan, I was sure Cameron had some Ashley or Becca or Caitlin along the way. I didn't ask. "He's nice," I added. "He's..." I don't know what I'd planned to say, but whatever it was it seemed insignificant so I finished that sentence with a shrug. "You lost your lisp." And about twenty-five pounds, I thought. "I guess speech therapy worked for both of us." He smiled. "I always liked that, you know. Your lisp. It was...you." He started down the porch steps. "See you tomorrow, okay?" "Yeah," I said, unable to take my eyes off of him. "Tomorrow.

You look beautiful,” my dad said as he walked over to me and offered his arm. His voice was quiet--even quieter than his normal quiet--and it broke, trailed off, died. I took his arm, and together we walked forward, toward the large wooden doors that led to the beautiful sanctuary where I’d been baptized as a young child just after our family joined the Episcopal church. Where I’d been confirmed by the bishop at the age of twelve. I’d worn a Black Watch plaid Gunne Sax dress that day. It had delicate ribbon trim and a lace-up tie in the back--a corset-style tie, which, I realized, foreshadowed the style of my wedding gown. I looked through the windows and down the aisle and could see myself kneeling there, the bishop’s wrinkled, weathered hands on my auburn hair. I shivered with emotion, feeling the sting in my nose…and the warm beginnings of nostalgia-driven tears. Biting my bottom lip, I stepped forward with my father. Connell had started walking down the aisle as the organist began playing “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” I could close my eyes and hear the same music playing on the eight-track tape player in my mom’s Oldsmobile station wagon. Was it the London Symphony Orchestra or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir? I suddenly couldn’t remember. But that’s why I’d chosen it for the processional--not because it appeared on Modern Bride’s list of acceptable wedding processionals, but because it reminded me of childhood…of Bach…of home. I watched as Becky followed Connell, and then my sister, Betsy, her almost jet-black hair shining in the beautiful light of the church. I was so glad to have a sister. Ms. Altar Guild gently coaxed my father and me toward the door. “It’s time,” she whispered. My stomach fell. What was happening? Where was I? Who was I? At that very moment, my worlds were colliding--the old world with the new, the past life with the future. I felt my dad inhale deeply, and I followed his lead. He was nervous; I could feel it. I was nervous, too. As we took our place in the doorway, I squeezed his arm and whispered, “I love thee.” It was our little line. “I love thee, too,” he whispered back. And as I turned my head toward the front of the church, my eyes went straight to him--to Marlboro Man, who was standing dead ahead, looking straight at me.

You want to kiss her, right?” “What?” I have lost track of our conversation. I was thinking about how if Kit called me her friend, then I would have multiplied my number of them by a factor of two. And then I considered the word flirting, how it sounds like fluttering, which is what butterflies do. Which of course looped me back to chaos theory and my realization that I’d like to have more information to provide Kit on the topic. “Do. You. Want. To. Kiss. Her?” Miney asks again. “Yes, of course I do. Who wouldn’t want to kiss Kit?” “I don’t want to kiss Kit,” Miney says, doing that thing where she imitates me and how I answer rhetorical questions. Though her intention is to mock rather than to educate, it’s actually been a rather informative technique to demonstrate my tendency toward taking people too literally. “Mom doesn’t want to kiss Kit. I don’t know about Dad, but I doubt it.” My father doesn’t look up. His face is buried in a book about the mating patterns of migratory birds. It’s too bad our scholarly interests have never overlapped. Breakfast would be so much more interesting if we could discuss our work. “So if you want to kiss Kit, that means you want her to see you like a real guy,” Miney says, and points at me with her cup of coffee. She’s drinking it black. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with Miney. Maybe she’s just tired. “I am a real guy.” How come even my own sister sees me as something not quite human? Something other. “I have a penis.” “And just when I think we’ve made progress you go and mention your penis.” “What? Fact: I have a penis. That makes me a guy. Though technically there are some trans people who have penises but self-identify as girls.” “Please stop saying that word.” “What word? Penis?” “Yes.” “Do you prefer member? Shlong? Wang? Johnson?” I ask. “Dongle, perhaps?” “I would prefer we not discuss your man parts at all.” “Wait, should I text Kit immediately and clarify that I do in fact have man parts?” I pick up my phone and start typing. “Dear Kit. Just to be clear. I have a penis.” “Oh my God. Do not text her. Seriously, stop.” Miney puts her coffee down hard. She’ll climb over the table and tackle me if she has to. “Ha! Totally got you!” I smile, as proud as I was the other day for my that’s what she said joke. “Who are you?” Miney asks, but she’s grinning too. I’ll admit it takes a second—something about the disconnect between her confused tone and her happy face—and I almost, almost say out loud: Duh, I’m Little D. Instead I let her rhetorical question hang, just like I’m supposed to

We always thought it was cool that my mom only had boys, you know? Doug said, for once dropping his gangsta accent. “Who knew that we actually needed a sister?” Megan looked down at her hands. “Oh, man! Are you gonna go all blubbery on my ass?” Doug asked. Megan laughed. “No.” “So are you comin’ back with me or what?” Megan lifted her head and sighed. “I have a few conditions.” “Shoulda known,” Doug said, rolling his eyes. “First of all, I did not sign up for a truck stop bathroom,” Megan said. “You guys need to start cleaning up after yourselves in there. No more blood, no more hair, no more random stains that I don’t even want identified.” “All right, all right,” Doug said. “That it?” “Hardly,” Megan said. “I want a hands-off rule on all my stuff. Including my bike.” “Okay…” “And I want everyone to stop calling me Megan C Cups behind my back.” Doug’s jaw went slack as he flushed. “How did you know about that?” Megan raised her eyebrows. “All right, fine. Is that all?” Doug said. “You think you can do these things for me?” Megan asked. “Well, I may have to put the beatdown on a few people, but yeah. No problem,” Doug said casually. “Don’t beat down anybody,” Megan said. “Don’t tell me how to do my job,” Doug said, cracking his knuckles comically. “Okay,” Megan said, standing. For the first time all day, she felt calm--certain. “I’ll come back.” “Thank God!” Doug said. “Let’s get the hell outta this place.” “Oh, wait! One more thing,” Megan said, stopping Doug in his tracks. His shoulders slumped and he turned around. “What? You want my kidney?” “I want in on the next ultimate Frisbee game,” Megan said. Doug grinned. “You’re playin’ skins.” Megan grinned back. “We’ll see about that.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK WHAT TO DO FIRST 1. Find the MAP. It will be there. No Tour of Fantasyland is complete without one. It will be found in the front part of your brochure, quite near the page that says For Mom and Dad for having me and for Jeannie (or Jack or Debra or Donnie or …) for putting up with me so supportively and for my nine children for not interrupting me and for my Publisher for not discouraging me and for my Writers’ Circle for listening to me and for Barbie and Greta and Albert Einstein and Aunty May and so on. Ignore this, even if you are wondering if Albert Einstein is Albert Einstein or in fact the dog. This will be followed by a short piece of prose that says When the night of the wolf waxes strong in the morning, the wise man is wary of a false dawn. Ka’a Orto’o, Gnomic Utterances Ignore this too (or, if really puzzled, look up GNOMIC UTTERANCES in the Toughpick section). Find the Map. 2. Examine the Map. It will show most of a continent (and sometimes part of another) with a large number of BAYS, OFFSHORE ISLANDS, an INLAND SEA or so and a sprinkle of TOWNS. There will be scribbly snakes that are probably RIVERS, and names made of CAPITAL LETTERS in curved lines that are not quite upside down. By bending your neck sideways you will be able to see that they say things like “Ca’ea Purt’wydyn” and “Om Ce’falos.” These may be names of COUNTRIES, but since most of the Map is bare it is hard to tell. These empty inland parts will be sporadically peppered with little molehills, invitingly labeled “Megamort Hills,” “Death Mountains, ”Hurt Range” and such, with a whole line of molehills near the top called “Great Northern Barrier.” Above this will be various warnings of danger. The rest of the Map’s space will be sparingly devoted to little tiny feathers called “Wretched Wood” and “Forest of Doom,” except for one space that appears to be growing minute hairs. This will be tersely labeled “Marshes.” This is mostly it. No, wait. If you are lucky, the Map will carry an arrow or compass-heading somewhere in the bit labeled “Outer Ocean” and this will show you which way up to hold it. But you will look in vain for INNS, reststops, or VILLAGES, or even ROADS. No – wait another minute – on closer examination, you will find the empty interior crossed by a few bird tracks. If you peer at these you will see they are (somewhere) labeled “Old Trade Road – Disused” and “Imperial Way – Mostly Long Gone.” Some of these routes appear to lead (or have lead) to small edifices enticingly titled “Ruin,” “Tower of Sorcery,” or “Dark Citadel,” but there is no scale of miles and no way of telling how long you might take on the way to see these places. In short, the Map is useless, but you are advised to keep consulting it, because it is the only one you will get. And, be warned. If you take this Tour, you are going to have to visit every single place on this Map, whether it is marked or not. This is a Rule. 3. Find your STARTING POINT. Let us say it is the town of Gna’ash. You will find it down in one corner on the coast, as far away from anywhere as possible. 4. Having found Gna’ash, you must at once set about finding an INN, Tour COMPANIONS, a meal of STEW, a CHAMBER for the night, and then the necessary TAVERN BRAWL. (If you look all these things up in the Toughpick section, you will know what you are in for.) The following morning, you must locate the MARKET and attempt to acquire CLOTHING (which absolutely must include a CLOAK), a SADDLE ROLL, WAYBREAD, WATERBOTTLES, a DAGGER, a SWORD, a HORSE, and a MERCHANT to take you along in his CARAVAN. You must resign yourself to being cheated over most prices and you are advised to consult a local MAGICIAN about your Sword. 5. You set off. Now you are on your own. You should turn to the Toughpick section of this brochure and select your Tour on a pick-and-mix basis, remembering only that you will have to take in all of it.

It's an unceremonious end to a big dig - excavating and building 8,300 linear feet of concrete-lined tunnels running from South of Market beneath Union Square and Chinatown to North Beach. But the excavation passed unnoticed by people on the surface, who didn't even feel vibrations. Big Alma and Mom Chung, each weighing 750 tons and stretching longer than a football field, even passed 7 feet beneath the BART tracks below Market Street without requiring the transit system to stop, or even slow, its trains.

I headed for the gate. I had a tracking spell to cast and a force rod to craft, all the while having to dodge the Conclave, and keep my Mom from finding out I was a warlock. And if that wasn't enough, I had to get it all done before my mom got home from work. Yeah, that was me, livin' the glamorous life of a teenage warlock.

Your mom thinks this is her chance to make things right for you.” His long legs ate up the ground as he circled like a caged lion. “Bullshit. She wants to save him.” “She wants to save you.” He shook his head. “She’s always been a sucker for him. No matter what story she’s selling now.” Maddie shrugged. “I can’t say I blame her.” Mitch whipped around to face her. “Why do you say that?” “She says you’re a lot alike.” “I’m nothing like him.” Hands clenched into fists. “As I said, we’ve been talking a lot. She told me who he was before he got caught up in the power of politics, who he was when she first met him. I think you’re more alike than you think.” “I’d never screw over people like he does.” Anger emanated from Mitch, aggression in the set of his legs and arms. He was ready to attack. She raised one brow. “Are you sure about that?” He reared back as though she’d struck him. “How could you think that?” “You’ve said yourself you weren’t a very nice person. Have you ever thought about what would have happened if you hadn’t lost your career?” She straightened her shoulders and looked him straight in the eye. “You didn’t have the best track record. You walked a shady line. You were sleeping with another man’s wife. Destroying evidence. Who knows what you would have become if the whole house of cards had never fallen around you?” He stopped walking as though snapped by an invisible leash. With his expression transforming into a thundercloud, he crossed his arms over his chest. “So what are you trying to say, Maddie?” He needed some cold, hard truth. Tough love, as her dad used to say. “Have you ever thought that losing your career and reputation was the best thing that ever happened to you? Maybe the tragedy wasn’t that everything went to hell, but that you never picked up the pieces and put them back together again.

I was so happy. I had changed lots of diapers in my twenty-two years and cared for lots of babies, but our Lily was ours, and to us, she was perfect and healthy. She was easy and quiet, and she slept really good. I always knew I was going to love being a mom, and I was right. I loved it. I could even take her to the movies, and she wouldn’t make a peep. Phil always says Lily was the first granddaughter who wasn’t afraid of him. And it was true. From the very first time they laid eyes on each other, baby Lily was a match for Phil. She just took to him. I guess it was the beard, and it was a good thing Jep had a hunting-season beard when she was born because she was used to it. She loved her Papaw Phil, and as soon as she was a few months old and could sit up, she’d sit in his lap and watch Fox News. Jep had always said he wanted his children to be around his family, especially his parents, so I made an effort to bring Lily down to Phil and Kay’s as often as possible. While Lily sat with Phil, I’d help Miss Kay with work or in the kitchen or just sit and visit. In the back of my mind, I still carried some of the fear and worry from my pregnancy. As she got closer to a year old, Jep and I noticed Lily hadn’t started talking yet, although she seemed to be normal and healthy in every other way. She was alert and sweet and smart, but she was quiet. Her eyes were big, and she watched everything going on around her. But she didn’t talk. In her second year, we got a little more worried because Lily still wasn’t talking. Developmentally, everything else was on track. She grew and ate solid good and crawled and walked, but still no words. We were concerned and afraid something might be wrong. Lily finally started talking when she was three, and she has turned out to be as smart as can be and does very well in school. There is nothing wrong with her. Lily is on her own timetable, and we had to wait patiently for her personality to emerge. I’m guessing her quiet personality came from her dad. I don’t know, but maybe I did all her talking for her, and she didn’t feel the need those first few years! Lily is twelve years old now. She’s still sweet and smart and quiet, and she still loves her family.

What’s up, Sam?” “What birthday?” he panted. “What?” “What birthday, Anna?” It took a while for her to absorb his fear. It took a while for the reason for his fear to dawn on her. “Fifteen,” Anna said in a whisper. “What’s the matter?” Emma asked, sensing her twin’s mood. “It doesn’t mean anything.” “It doesn’t,” Anna whispered. “You’re probably right,” Sam said. “Oh, my God,” Anna said. “Are we going to disappear?” “When were you born?” Sam asked. “What time of day?” The twins exchanged scared looks. “We don’t know.” “You know what, no one has blinked out since that first day, so it’s probably—” Emma disappeared. Anna screamed. The other older kids took notice, the littles, too. “Oh, my God!” Anna cried. “Emma. Emma. Oh, God!” She grabbed Sam’s hands and he held her tight. The prees, some of them, caught the fear. Mother Mary came over. “What’s going on? You’re scaring the kids. Where’s Emma?” Anna just kept saying, “Oh, my God,” and calling her sister’s name. “Where’s Emma?” Mary demanded again. “What’s going on?” Sam didn’t want to explain. Anna was hurting him with the pressure of her fingers digging into the backs of his hands. Anna’s eyes were huge, staring holes in him. “How far apart were you born?” Sam asked. Anna just stared in blank horror. Sam lowered his voice to an urgent whisper. “How far apart were you born, Anna?” “Six minutes,” she whispered. “Hold my hands, Sam,” she said. “Don’t let me go, Sam,” she said. “I won’t, Anna, I won’t let you go,” Sam said. “What’s going to happen, Sam?” “I don’t know, Anna.” “Will we go to where our mom and dad are?” “I don’t know, Anna." “Am I going to die?” “No, Anna. You’re not going to die.” “Don’t let go of me, Sam.” Mary was there now, a baby on her hip. John was there. The prees, some of them, watched with serious, worried looks on their faces. “I don’t want to die,” Anna repeated. “I…I don’t know what it’s like.” “It’s okay, Anna.” Anna smiled. “That was a nice date. When we went out.” “It was.” For a split second it was like Anna blurred. Too fast to be real. She blurred, and Sam could almost swear that she had smiled at him. And his fingers squeezed on nothing. For a terribly long time no one moved or said anything. The littles didn’t cry out. The older kids just stared. Sam’s fingertips still remembered the feel of Anna’s hands. He stared at the place where her face had been. He could still see her pleading eyes. Unable to stop himself, he reached a hand into the space she had occupied. Reaching for a face that was no longer there. Someone sobbed. Someone cried out, other voices then, the prees started crying. Sam felt sick. When his teacher had disappeared he hadn’t been expecting it. This time he had seen it coming, like a monster in a slow-motion nightmare. This time he had seen it coming, like standing rooted on the railroad tracks, unable to jump aside.

Persistence, however, is an action that goes hand in hand with self-discipline—you can’t be persistently consistent if you don’t have the self-discipline necessary to stay on track. Life is full of temptations and it’s even more difficult to resist them as an entrepreneur who works from home and chooses their own schedule. Can you skip watching the premiere of your favorite TV show to work a couple extra hours instead? Are you willing to turn down a night out with friends to do some last-minute work before your paycheck is submitted? Self-discipline is a skill that you need to develop (if you haven’t already),

Before long, something unexpected happened to test my newfound faith. Mom had to go in for a simple, twenty-minute surgery. I went with Dad to the hospital, and we waited while she was in the operating room. Forty-five minutes went by, and no one came out to tell us anything. Then a nurse came out, and one look at her face told me the news was not good. “Look, there’s a problem,” she said. “We haven’t been able to wake her up. She’s gone into a coma. We have a machine breathing for her, and we think she’s going to be okay, but she needs to wake up.” Dad looked at me, his face white and his eyes big and scared. We had no idea what was going on, but we knew it was bad. Really bad. He grabbed my shoulder and said through tears, “We’re fixin’ to pray for your mom right now.” I’d never heard him pray as fervently. He was frantic and telling God about how much we needed Mom in our family. We knew her life was at stake, and we both were scared she would never wake up. The rest of the family came to the hospital, and we gathered, praying our hearts out. We finally got in to see her, and the sight of Mom on a respirator, her chest rising and falling with the help of the machine, freaked us all out. Eventually, we found out what had happened. There had been a mistake, and Mom had been given too much anesthetic, sending her into a serious coma. Two days later, after many tears and huddles with family and desperate prayers, Mom came out of it, woke up, and started breathing on her own. I knew deep in my heart that she could have died, but God had chosen to answer our prayers, and that really built my faith. I was such a new Christian that I’m not sure how I would have reacted if something would have happened to my mom. I also felt like it drew me closer to my dad, as we had been the first ones to hear the news and to pray for her together. I saw a side of him I didn’t see very often, how much he loved and needed my mom and how much he trusted God to help him in a very bad situation. No matter whose fault it was, we were just relieved Mom made it out alive. She recovered from the experience, and with her cooking during those months, my appetite came back, and I gained fifty pounds. I even got a little chunky, so I started working out so I could look and feel better. Those three months of house arrest were probably the best days of my life. My thinking had changed, my heart’s desires were back on track, and I had hope for the future.

Jimmy drags the report across the table and spends a minute reading it from beginning to end. “Same old story,” he says. “Dysfunctional or absent parents, no discipline, no supervision, lousy friends and worse acquaintances, drugs, and now death.” He pushes the folder away in disgust. “Remind me again why we’re killing ourselves to help people who couldn’t tell a good decision from a bad one if it slapped them in the face?” “Because life is a vast wilderness where it’s easy to get lost,” I suggest with a humble smile. “Yeah,” he snorts, “but it’s only a vast wilderness if you ignore the giant signs that say STAY ON PATH.” He flicks a wrist at me. “Aren’t you the one who always says we get what we deserve in life, good or bad?” “No, that’s my mom.” “Same difference,” Jimmy says,

About ten years ago, I decided I wanted to be a more attentive father. So I asked my daughter, “What can I do to be a better parent?” She said, “Daddy, you travel a lot, but I don’t mind that you’re away from home so much. What really bothers me is the way you act when you are home. You talk on the telephone, you watch sports on TV, and you don’t spend much time with me. One weekend, when you’d been traveling for two weeks, my friends were having a party. I wanted to go, but Mom wouldn’t let me. She said I had to spend time with you. So I stayed home, but you didn’t spend any time with me. That wasn’t right.” I was hurt and stunned, because (a) she nailed me and (b) I was an oafish dad who had needlessly caused his daughter pain. There’s no worse feeling in the world, I can assure you. You never want to see your children in any pain. And you certainly don’t want to be the source of it. I recovered quickly—and reverted to a simple response that I teach all my clients. I said, “Thank you. Daddy will do better.” From that moment I started keeping track

Ortega 12th April, 2014 I am writing this as fast as I can. The doors on the Phaedra don’t lock, and Mom could walk in any moment. I have no privacy. I am the only twelve-year-old girl I know who has to share a room with her mom. I have pointed out how unfair it is, the way the jellyfish equipment takes up the whole front of the boat, but Mom won’t listen. Typical – the jellyfish get their own room and I don’t. I’m not trying to make excuses for my handwriting or anything, but if it is all scrawly that’s because my arm’s so trembly I can hardly hold the pen. I think it’s from gripping on to the tractor for so long. The entire way home I had to cling to the wheel arch, sitting up there behind Annie like a parrot perched on a pirate’s shoulder. The way she drove along those rutted jungle tracks, I was petrified I was going to lose hold and fall beneath the wheels. By the time we reached the bay and I could see the Phaedra, my body had been shaken up like a can of fizzy drink. There was no sign of Mom as the tractor lumbered over the dunes and down the beach towards the sea. I was kind of relieved, to tell the truth. The whole time at Annie’s house I had been desperate to get back to the boat, but now that I was home I felt sick at the thought of facing Mom. She would be furious with me. I had been gone for two whole days…

I grew up caring about things. I just carried it over into my work. I knew that people had problems. I knew that my mom had problems. I knew the problems that people on the south side had. I tried to get them all to the next level of success, something you could be proud of. And I just practiced the same principles on the team. -- Joe I. Vigil

Can you get Pete some ice for his eye?” Dad asks my mom. Her brow arches at me, and she shoots me a glare that would drop a full-grown man in his tracks. She starts to fill a zipper bag with ice. “And just why does Pete need ice for his eye?” she asks flippantly. Dad points to me. “Your daughter hit him in the face.” Mom gasps. “Reagan!” Mom crosses to stand close to Pete. She looks him over, pressing on the bone beneath his eye with her thumb. He hisses in a breath. One side of his face is dirty, probably from where Dad rolled him into the dirt. Mom passes him a damp cloth, and he wipes gingerly at his face. When it’s clean, Mom presses his eye socket with the pad of her thumb. He winces and jerks his head back. “I think Reagan did enough damage,” Dad warns. “Stop torturing the boy.” He glares at me, too. I want to hide my face in shame. Suddenly, I notice the way that Pete is holding his left wrist in his hand. My gaze shoots up to meet his, and I don’t see anything but curiosity. He should be fuming mad. He has every right to be. “Is your arm hurt?” I ask quietly. The corners of Pete’s lips tilt in a small smile. “It’s fine.” “It’s not fine,” Dad gripes. “It might be broken.” “Oh shit,” I breathe. “Reagan,” Mom warns. “Oh shit,” Link parrots. Shit again. Now Link’s repeating me. “Oh shit,” Link says again. I bury my face in my hands. My parents are going to kill me when they get me alone.

You shouldn’t have come out on this, Duncan. We could have waited to see you when the roads cleared.” “It wasn’t that bad, Mom. The plows have been through.” “Yes, but your father cleared the driveway and he didn’t do that great of a job.” “He did fine, Mom. Hey, I’d like to introduce you to Dr. Alex Hartfield. Alex, this is Meredith Wilde.” Meredith’s wide gaze switched to Alex immediately, excitement washing over her features so similar to Duncan’s. “You brought a woman to Christmas? Oh, you should have told me! Come in, come in!” Before she knew it Alex was drawn into a cushy hug and set back so Meredith could look her over. “Oh, my, aren’t you gorgeous? Duncan. She’s a pretty one.” Alex winced and when she glanced at Duncan he was shaking his head and mouthing ‘sorry’ to her behind Meredith’s back. Alex snickered. “We’ve long lost hope that Duncan would ever bring home a real girl. His aunt Helen, my sister, always said he was gay because he was so pretty, but I knew in my heart that it would just take the right woman to catch his attention.” Alex laughed out loud, loving the woman’s irrepressible nature. If Duncan was mid-forties, Meredith had to be mid-sixties to seventies, but she certainly didn’t look it, or act it. Alex looked at Duncan. His cheeks were a little pink and he had a strange expression on his face. “Aunt Helen thinks I’m gay? Seriously?” Meredith waved a hand at him. “Not really, dear. She was just talking out her ass trying to convince herself your cousin Martin isn’t gay.” Meredith turned back to Alex and stage whispered, “but he is.” Alex laughed, thoroughly enjoying herself. Then the other people started moving in. She lost track of names and faces but did single out Duncan’s brothers, Sam and Robert. Both were good looking men, and even Duncan’s father Joe still kept his good looks, though he was years older. He welcomed her with a light hug and a calm look. “Don’t let them overwhelm you.” Nodding,

I’m not a man who’s free. My birthright and my past decisions have made sure of that. Willow, Nora, Glenna, my mom, and the people at Bradford Shipping are depending on me and so I try hard not to let selfish desires worm their way into my life. But I have come to want one selfish thing, despite all my best efforts. I want Kathleen. It’s been two months since she bribed me with chocolate cake. I think about her all the time. At work. At home. My track record with women is terrible. Loving her would probably doom either her or me. But still, I want her. Note

By then we had passed through the small town beyond the Bar None Bar. Dad was driving and smoking with one hand and holding a brown bottle of beer with the other. Lori was in the front seat between him and Mom, and Brian, who was in back with me, was trying to trade me half of his 3 Musketeers for half of my Mounds. Just then we took a sharp turn over some railroad tracks, the door flew open, and I tumbled out of the car. I rolled several yards along the embankment, and when I came to a stop, I was too shocked to cry, with my breath knocked out and grit and pebbles in my eyes and mouth. I lifted my head in time to watch the Green Caboose get smaller and smaller and then disappear around a bend. Blood was running down my forehead and flowing out of my nose. My knees and elbows were scraped raw and covered with sand. I was still holding the Mounds bar, but I had smashed it during the fall, tearing the wrapper and squeezing out the white coconut filling, which was also covered with grit.

Mind World, she saw everything through Riley’s eyes. Joy stepped up to the console, a device the Emotions used to control Riley’s reactions, and watched in awe, as Riley’s parents looked down at their beautiful daughter for the first time. “Hello, Riley,” said Mom, beaming. “Oh, look at you,” said Dad in amazement. “Aren’t you a little bundle of joy.” Suddenly, a golden sphere rolled down a track to the right of the console in Headquarters, lighting up the room with its soft glow. Joy picked

Girl’s at her own father’s funeral, meets this really cute guy. They talk, hit it off, but he leaves before she can get his number. Girl doesn’t know how to track the guy down. So a week later, she kills her mom.

There was a mailman I loved as a little girl. He would stop at the communal mailbox On the street In the center of the apartment complex And begin sorting mail away Into 150 different little boxes We lived in 1202 I would rush from my house To greet the mailman And he would talk to me as he worked Filing away bills and cards and coupons He would ask me questions Quiz me And give me a piece of Bazooka gum For every question I got right I would spin around and crush my sneakers rocking up and down on my toes I would curl one piece of hair Around my finger while I thought of the answers I would slide my tongue between my teeth and the windows where they were missing And between every mailbox The mailman would look at me and smile He’d pat me on the cheek And tell me That I was as smart as he was. As smart as any man. And I believed him. Because why wouldn’t I? I was 8. I knew that George Bush would win the election. I knew the Pythagorean theorem. I read 300 books from the public library And I could draw every animal by memory. I liked him ’cause he gave me chewing gum And talked to me in his low voice Calm and soft Not the shrill, high-pitched voice They would use on my baby brother. One day the mailman didn’t show up for work I ran out and stopped in my tracks There was a different man there I asked if my friend was sick The imposter ignored me The new mailman showed up a few days in a row The kids in the neighborhood said The old one had a heart attack in a bowl of spaghetti And died with noodles up his nose I cried One Wednesday I ran out to the new mailman And asked if he had any gum He told me to stay away Because he didn’t want to get in trouble like Charlie I didn’t know my friend’s name was Charlie And I didn’t know how I could have gotten him in trouble So I asked my mom How you could give someone a heart attack And she rubbed her head and stretched her feet across the couch and said, “It feels like you’re gonna give me one right now.” I didn’t want my mom to die too. So I hid in my room And I cried Because I was 8 And a murderer.

I keep this my dirty little secret for years, he was my true first, yet it was not the most romantic yet it was something, now looking back now how is the loser, it did it long before, yet it was with him so it was not cool, I never- ever said this to anyone, that he took me. Yet play around like that with a boy that was me, he wanted to know so I said okay. It was the first time seeing all that- you know, at least mine was real, and not like time two at a party. This thing is so high- I get sick of feeling so short at like four-foot, on top that I can see the world by looking down, and they are looking up at me, my mom and grandmother were all the same size also, if not shorter, or so they say. The car is old and dusty and looks like no one has been in it for years on the outside, it is just blacked and crusty, the only car other than the coal car behind the locomotive, and it too is rusted reddish orange. They used to have tripped over this thing and park it on the bridge, and you spent the night up in the stars, and so that is what we did on a big full moon night. In the big bed looking out the one side of all those old windows. The car and train sit here for there was a fire or something on that line, and this becomes the new home of the serving remanences about half a mile in, the train was going over and was near the end on the one said when the wind took it all down, and all the cars but one fall all the many feet to the ground below, yet it never steamed over again. There sits the old Pullman car. It's red and has black, with yellow writing on it, up till now I am not sure what it says. It was a custom car made just for spending the night on top of the linked- mountains. The train is all the same color for what I can make out, dating around the 1800s or so, that what my dad said anyway we and he were up here, oh so long ago. We both walked up to her and me on the left, tacking him on the right hand-woven tight. The grass tall the track worn, and feet sore, from the journey there. Over smaller yet high crossings that have known side rails. Inside you can see it is in touch, and all dark wood, I light one of the old lanterns, I thought down a towel, and we had juice pouches and P-P and J. Romantic- No! It’s all good, he tried. It wasn’t about that anyway. The bed is off to the back and looks like a five-star hotel room to us, there is a living room spot, where ass naked in the big old sofas… or next to it, we were playing house, and loving it. We were young but we feel- we were on the bed all night long. Looking out over… see the tree sway below. it was cold in the car, yet he keeps me warm, I was fogging up the windows, with my breath Moan it out in a sweet- yet sensual way, I was pressed upon it looking out as I was on top, he was looking up at me, yet I was looking out and at his eyes, at definite times. I even kissed the glass to leave something behind, I wonder if it’s still there, and my name is covered in the old wood, next to his.

Well, shit. He bowed his head and squeezed his eyes shut as it dawned on him. She had been grieving her mom today, had been probably screaming inside as the agony tormented her, but instead of coming to him—her mate—for any kind of comfort or even to just confide in him or cry on his shoulder, she had retreated within herself. Because she hadn’t felt like she could come to him, had probably thought that he wouldn’t want her to. Then when he, like a bastard, refused to give her the space she needed, she had finally sought comfort. The fact that the only place she thought she could find it was a shoe box filled with memories of her dead true mate was like a blow to Trey’s gut. A blow he deserved. Guilt knifed through him as he thought about how much of a prick he had been to Taryn. Dante was right. Although this mating was temporary, that didn’t mean that Trey should be able to just cast her aside. She had become his responsibility the second he claimed her, but all he’d done was try to escape that responsibility when he got a little spooked by his wolf and some primal instincts. He had frozen her out, just as she had done to him today. The feelings of rejection, anger, and desolation he had experienced earlier were things that she had obviously been suffering with all this time. In total silence. Shit, she hadn’t deserved that, hadn’t deserved his cold shoulder, especially when she was being so loyal to their deal. It was a wonder that she hadn’t left—it wasn’t as if she couldn’t have sneaked off. It was clear by the way she had led them on a merry chase and covered her tracks so well that she had the ability at least to try to make a run for it. It wasn’t as though fear of him kept her here. She hadn’t once expressed any fear of him, not even when his wolf had gone feral. Although Roscoe was dead and she didn’t need Trey anymore, she had stayed to fulfill her end of the deal. Even though he’d been a total ass. Even though his grandmother constantly strove to make her feel unwelcome. Even though it meant having to lie to her friends and repeatedly claim that her true mate had been nothing but a good friend. One thing was for sure—she was a better person than he would ever be. She was someone who any male would be proud to have as his mate, temporary or not.

I’d kill for a dad to teach me stuff. All I’ve got is Gerald and his slurred screaming. But if my mom’s track record with men has anything to say about it, I won’t have to deal with him for long.

To the Mysterious Miss F! Ugh—I’m already regretting starting this letter that way. But I don’t have any extra paper, and crossing it out would look worse, so… I guess we’ll just have to add it to my list of mistakes. And I know you’re going to think that everything I’m about to say should also be on that long list of Keefe Fails. But I swear—that’s NOT what this is. I’m not trying to fix everything or save everyone this time. I’m just trying to make sure I don’t hurt anyone. I can’t tell you more than that without putting you in danger, so just… trust me when I say that the powers my mom gave me are super bad. There seriously aren’t strong enough words to explain how horrible they are. And I CAN’T control them—just like I can’t stop my mom from forcing me to use them. So… this is the only way. I don’t want to do it. But I have to. And I’m not going to ask you not to hate me. In fact, it might be better if you do, because I need you to PROMISE that you won’t try to find me. My mom will be waiting for you to track me down—and since I know how stubborn you are, I want to make sure you understand who you’d be putting in danger. I’m going to be hiding the same way the Black Swan hid you. That’s why you have to stay away. Well, there are lots of reasons. So again, please, just… trust me, okay? And since this is the last time I’ll ever talk to you, I just… I want to say that I’m really going to miss you. You mean a lot to me, Foster. More than you’ll ever know. Please be careful. Please be happy. And PLEASE forget all about me. It’ll be better for everyone that way. You’ll see. Love, Keefe

The tall man drew a curved blade from beneath his leather coat. A sword, like from a storybook. Dad was trying to pull the axe free from the doorframe when the man plunged the sword into Dad’s stomach, pushing it upward. There was a sound, like sticks snapping, and an animal cry. Dad fell to the vestibule carpet, the one Mom always yelled about when they tracked mud on it. The rug that was turning red. Mom screamed. Jude screamed. Taryn and Vivi screamed. Everyone seemed to be screaming, except the tall man. “Come here,” he said, looking directly at Vivi. “Y-you monster,” their mother shouted, moving toward the kitchen. “He’s dead!

Mom will never let me skate again,” he said dejectedly, slumping into the seat. “Sure she will.” Pete hit a button that locked them onto a cable track and then typed in their parents’ address at the Eris Escape Tower, floor 247. “Do you know how long it took me to convince her to let me come to the Skypark the first time?” Marcus asked as they started to glide down the cables. “She wanted me to wear a gas mask, even though the park’s enclosed in glass, and then she finally agreed only if I wore zinc sunscreen and an insane amount of padding.

Bobby Brown. He got a song called “Roni” that my mother loves, that I think is so funny, because this dude, Bobby, just be calling this girl that he says he loves a “Tenderoni,” which I think is such a stupid name. Seriously. Like… what? So whenever Mom be singing it, I just change out Tenderoni with Macaroni or Pepperoni. It makes her so mad. “You ruining this song for me, Lu. Do you know your dad and I danced to this on our first date and at our wedding?” She turned the volume down just low enough to make sure I could hear her, and she could still hear the song. “If Dad called you Tenderoni, why would you go out on a second date with him? That’s like calling you Turkey Wing,” I explained. “ ‘Oh, oh, if you find a Turkey Wing that is right for youuuuu,’ ” I sang, pretending to be a lover boy like Bobby Brown apparently was.

Try not to think of purpose as some unattainable ideal. Purpose can arise in everyday contexts: a mom caring for her child, a musician performing original songs, or a lawyer arguing in court. To carry out purpose, create the conditions for accomplishing something meaningful to you that also has a positive impact on others. In my work, I call this a “dream endeavor.

If anybody else had ever wanted me happy, they could have fooled me. Possibly Mom, as long as it didn’t cross tracks with her own maneuvers. That’s all people really want, for you to fit into their maneuvers.

When you want to become a time bender, the first thing is to realize that there are, in fact, two different kinds of time and that you can experience time differently when you shift your perception and energy in the moment. I know Einstein time and Newtonian time are just theoretical right now, but I want you to make them real for yourself, so do me a favor. Think about the last time you were totally in the moment doing something and you lost track of time because you were so absorbed in what you were doing.

We took the truck. Corey’s mom’s SUV would have been more comfortable, but also extremely recognizable with the police logo. Not that it mattered, since we were already being tracked, but I could hardly say that. Daniel drove. I rode shotgun. I’d tried to get Sam to take that spot, so her leg would be more comfortable. She’d refused. We opened the window into the topper, though, so we could talk, and left the curtains open. We took the worst of the back roads. Again, that wasn’t necessary. Again, I couldn’t say so.

Nail these markers at the expected times and your social age is right on track. But if you dare deviate, your social age may fall much younger or older than the norm, which could affect you in ways you might not expect. Being a teenage mom, feeling the pressure to be in a serious relationship or on a career track, going back to school in your thirties, or not being financially able to retire are just a few deviations from the norm that could bring on what scientists call “social stress.

It’s like I’ve always had a painted musical sound track playing background to my life. I can almost hear colors and smell images when music is played. Mom loves classical. Big, booming Beethoven symphonies blast from her CD player all day long. Those pieces always seem to be bright blue as I listen, and they smell like fresh paint. Dad is partial to jazz, and every chance he gets, he winks at me, takes out Mom’s Mozart disc, then pops in a CD of Miles Davis or Woody Herman. Jazz to me sounds brown and tan, and it smells like wet dirt.

I stared hard at Suzanne, at her perfect heart-shaped face and reddish-brown skin, feeling comforted somehow by the youthful smoothness of her cheeks and the girlish curve in her lips. She seemed oddly undiminished by the illness. Her dark hair was still lustrous and long; someone had put in two ropy braids that reached almost to her waist. Her track runner's legs lay hidden beneath the blankets. She looked young, like a sweet, beautiful, twenty-six-year-old who was maybe in the middle of a nap. I regretted not coming earlier. I regretted the many times, over the course of our seesawing friendship, that I'd insisted she was making a wrong move, when possibly she'd been doing it right. I was suddenly glad for all the times she'd ignored my advice. I was glad that she hadn't overworked herself to get some fancy business school degree. That she'd gone off for a lost weekend with a semi-famous pop star, just for fun. I was happy that she'd made it to the Taj Mahal to watch the sunrise with her mom. Suzanne had lived in ways that I had not.

When Brad and I had moved to Sacramento for his job, I had resigned myself to caring for my mom in her declining years. She had moved to Sacramento from my smaller hometown, not far away, after I graduated from high school. I never intended to end up back in Sacramento Valley, but that's where my husband found a tenure-track position. When we relocated, I quit my job as associate food editor at a Bay Area-based magazine, and I was worried I wouldn't be able to find writing work in the smaller Sacramento area.

How do you know this is Paige?” I ask, pretty sure this is another fantasy. It’s one thing to have Dad’s tracking device. It’s another to actually be tracking Paige, considering she needs to have the transmitter on her. “The devil tells me.” She lowers her head, looking troubled. “If I promise him certain things,” she mumbles. “Okay.” I rub my forehead, trying to be patient. There’s a certain art to getting information out of my mom. You need one foot in reality and one foot in her world to get a better picture of what she’s talking about. “How does the devil know where Paige is?” She looks up at me as if I’d asked the dumbest question in the world. “The transmitter, of course.

Austen, I think I got it this time. Let me try to see if this fits. Here are some words for what you are describing. First, you are motivated to clean your bathroom because it does need it. You can even understand your mother’s demand that you clean it, because it is a pit! And it is your responsibility, right?” Austen nods approval. “And you feel a sense of urgency to get your laptop back, too. Right?” Austen nods in the affirmative again. “In fact, you would do almost anything to get your laptop back. Right?” One more time Austen is tracking my logic. “It’s just that you can’t connect cleaning your bathroom and getting the laptop back, because they aren’t related. Right?” “Sure,” Austen says. “It is so obvious that these things aren’t related, and Mother is always trying this stuff. It never works, so why does she bother?” I smile with Austen’s realization. “Actually, this type of approach is used by lots of parents, and it seldom works with teenagers. We parents think that if we withhold a privilege or a favorite item, we’ll get our kids to mind and do things like clean a bathroom. It doesn’t work, and all that happens is a power struggle. But let’s give Mom some slack here and work out your dilemma.” Austen is ready. I explain, “I think the problem is that we need to connect up your motivation to clean your bathroom to your responsibility to clean your bathroom with a call to action to actually clean your bathroom. That will satisfy the urgency you feel to get back your laptop. You’ll get a clean bathroom. You can please your mother. She will be motivated to give you back your laptop even though the laptop has nothing to do with a clean bathroom. This is a win-win solution Austen. You already have motivation, a sense of responsibility, and a feeling of urgency. The only thing that is missing for you is a call to action. That’s the missing piece you keep calling the “not doing it” part. Are you ready to connect the dots?” Austen’s eyes widen, and he smiles. “Yes that’s it!” he says. “I am missing the call to action part.

While the path to wealth is clearly marked, few are willing to adapt themselves to the modest discipline that the journey requires. Instead, we choose the shinier track of debt driven consumption, which we find further along is covered in vines and thorns.” – Benjamin Franklin

Sunday dinner at the Marsdens’ is more than a meal--it’s an occasion. I’m dressed accordingly, wearing a pale green sundress with a sweater to ward off the chill of the air-conditioning. “Well, I blame my mama, God rest her soul,” Laura Grace says with a sigh. “She never taught me how to cook. You have no idea how lucky you are, Jemma--you and Nan both. Your mama’s a great cook, and she made sure to teach you. You girls’ husbands are surely going to thank her one day.” It’s impossible to miss the pointed look she gives Ryder. He ignores her and continues to attack his own roast. He’s rolled up the sleeves of his white button-down shirt, but his tie is neat and his khakis perfectly pressed. He cuts off a slice of rare meat and brings it to his mouth. Chewing slowly, he fixes his gaze on the wall directly above my mother’s head. It’s clear that he, too, would rather be anywhere else right now--anywhere but here, a helpless victim of our mothers’ machinations. Laura Grace glances from him to me and back to him again. “Next year, when the two of you are off at Oxford, you better promise to drive over together each week for Sunday dinner, you hear?” “Now, c’mon, Laura Grace,” Mr. Marsden chides. “You know Ryder hasn’t made his decision yet. You’ve got to give the boy some space to figure it out.” She waves one hand in dismissal. “I know. But a mama can hope, can’t she? I’m sorry, but I just can’t imagine the two of them going off in different directions.” “There’s only one choice for the both of them, as far as I’m concerned,” my mom says. “It’s about time the Rebels get their football program back on track, and Ryder’s just the boy to do it--with Jemma cheering him on.” I can’t help but cringe, staring down at my plate. I mean, is this really what my mom dreams about? Is this the best she can imagine for me? For a moment, everyone continues to eat silently. The tension in the air is so thick you could cut it with a knife, but I doubt Mama or Laura Grace even notice.

Where did you guys end up?” “Control room,” Zeke says. “My mom used to work there, and she taught me most of what I’ll need to know already.” “I’m in the patrol leadership track…thing,” Shauna says. “Not the most exciting job ever, but at least I’ll get to be outside.” “Yeah, let’s hear you say that in the dead of winter when you’re trudging through a foot of snow and ice,” Lynn says sourly. She stabs at a pile of mashed potatoes with her fork. “I better do well in initiation. I don’t want to get stuck at the fence.” “Didn’t we talk about this?” Uriah says. “Don’t say the ‘I’ word until at most two weeks before it happens. It makes me want to throw up.” I look at the pile of food on his tray. “Stuffing yourself up to your eyeballs with food, though, that’s fine?” He rolls his eyes at me and bends over his tray to keep eating.

In our family, we live by the Hard Thing Rule. It has three parts. The first is that everyone—including Mom and Dad—has to do a hard thing. A hard thing is something that requires daily deliberate practice. I’ve told my kids that psychological research is my hard thing, but I also practice yoga. Dad tries to get better and better at being a real estate developer; he does the same with running. My oldest daughter, Amanda, has chosen playing the piano as her hard thing. She did ballet for years, but later quit. So did Lucy. This brings me to the second part of the Hard Thing Rule: You can quit. But you can’t quit until the season is over, the tuition payment is up, or some other “natural” stopping point has arrived. You must, at least for the interval to which you’ve committed yourself, finish whatever you begin. In other words, you can’t quit on a day when your teacher yells at you, or you lose a race, or you have to miss a sleepover because of a recital the next morning. You can’t quit on a bad day. And, finally, the Hard Thing Rule states that you get to pick your hard thing. Nobody picks it for you because, after all, it would make no sense to do a hard thing you’re not even vaguely interested in. Even the decision to try ballet came after a discussion of various other classes my daughters could have chosen instead. Lucy, in fact, cycled through a half-dozen hard things. She started each with enthusiasm but eventually discovered that she didn’t want to keep going with ballet, gymnastics, track, handicrafts, or piano. In the end, she landed on viola. She’s been at it for three years, during which time her interest has waxed rather than waned. Last year, she joined the school and all-city orchestras, and when I asked her recently if she wanted to switch her hard thing to something else, she looked at me like I was crazy. Next year, Amanda will be in high school. Her sister will follow the year after. At that point, the Hard Thing Rule will change. A fourth requirement will be added: each girl must commit to at least one activity, either something new or the piano and viola they’ve already started, for at least two years. Tyrannical? I don’t believe it is. And if Lucy’s and Amanda’s recent comments on the topic aren’t disguised apple-polishing, neither do my daughters. They’d like to grow grittier as they get older, and, like any skill, they know grit takes practice. They know they’re fortunate to have the opportunity to do so. For parents who would like to encourage grit without obliterating their children’s capacity to choose their own path, I recommend the Hard Thing Rule.

He took memory sticks and an external drive from his desk, and cables from the mess on the floor. Pike loaded his gear into the backpack, and we made our way toward the garage. Pike stopped when we reached the living room. “The fish.” The aquarium stood on its stand, bubbling. I said, “What about them?” Tyson said, “We gotta feed them.” We waited while Pike fed the fish, then followed him into the garage. The walls were lined with gray metal shelving units. The shelves were crowded with different-sized boxes and the clutter that accumulates as time passes, and more boxes were stacked on the floor in front of the shelves. Handwriting identified their contents: Christmas/ornaments, Christmas/lights, Tyson—baby clothes, Mom’s lamp. Pike pointed out a small black box clipped to the outside of the garage door’s track, up high by the ceiling and difficult to see. “Transmitter.

I like your passion. It makes me happy to meet people who know what they want and are going for it. Especially when those people are beautiful, like you." I retreated into the shadow of the banquette. Man, he made me feel so good. "It can be scary to pursue your dream, but I think the key is to surround yourself with people who support you," he said. 'My parents loved to cook. My mom is Filipino and my dad is French- both food cultures. They put me on this cooking track and I never looked back." "Oh!" I said. So that's why he looked a little like me. "I'm also mixed," I said. He smiled shyly. "I know," he said. And then I blushed, too.

She said her future was me. That I was one hundred percent of her reason for getting sober. I could see how this was supposed to make me feel great, but honestly it hit me as one more thing to worry about. What if she turns around in a month and gets shitfaced again or starts using? What does that tell you? That I wasn’t a strong enough reason. Stoner would be pissed off about the wasted cash and take it out on me. Mom was assigning me the superpower of getting and keeping her clean, and our family on track. It’s a lot of pressure.

Getting back on track (avoiding bad data): Deflect compliments Anchor fluff Dig beneath opinions, ideas, requests, and emotions

Without a word, I leaned down to collect my things. We carried pencil boxes back then. Mine was pink with Hello Kitty characters and full of sharpened yellow #2s. I grabbed one, stood up, and jammed it into the side of her head. The pencil splintered and part of it lodged in her neck. Syd started screaming and the other kids understandably lost it. Meanwhile, I was in a daze. The pressure was gone. But, unlike every other time I’d done something bad, my physical attack on Syd had resulted in something different, a sort of euphoria. I walked away from the scene blissfully at ease. For weeks I’d been engaging in all manner of subversive behavior to make the pressure disappear and none of it had worked. But now—with that one violent act—all traces of pressure were eradicated. Not just gone but replaced by a deep sense of peace. It was like I’d discovered a fast track to tranquility, one that was equal parts efficacy and madness. None of it made sense, but I didn’t care. I wandered around in a stupor for a while. Then I went home and calmly told my mom what had happened.