I tapped my foot and stared at the triangle of skin between James Knox’s brows and the top of his sunglasses—red-framed today. “What’s your answer?” I clenched my arms across my waist. “You’ve kept me hanging for a week.” He dropped his head, sighed, faced me. “Yeah,...
I gripped Eric Bensen’s room number in my fist and scanned the digits that stretched down the shiny Fish Memorial Hospital hall. Eric, one of last year’s crushes, landed in the hospital after a lawn mower accident. He was probably bummed and worried about running...
The six of us peered into each other’s eyes, trying in short seconds to excavate the girls we’d known when we were sixteen from the fifty-six year old faces staring back at us. Then we flung ourselves into hugs. Wonder and words and laughter and very old trust...
In November Mom married my stepdad. In December we moved a hundred miles up the east coast from Miami. In January I transferred into Stuart Middle School in the middle of eighth grade. I thought I might be due a little peace—not the fight that broke out my first day...
July, 18, 2016, Ashland OH—My eyes traced the gold and maroon geometric pattern on the carpet of Ashland University’s John C. Myers Convocation Center. I’d attended the annual National Conference of the Brethren Church for over 35 years and I was focused on slipping...
