Her Treat Antonia Cardinale __________ Through a series of unfortunate events- that if to be written down would take up an entire novel- I manage to find myself shopping for a Catholic school-appropriate dress to wear to my senior prom. The absolute last thing I wanted to do this weekend…
Read MoreDreams of an Old Cat Meg Pokrass __________ Waiting for the vet to arrive with his needle, the doorbell startles early. Swallowing a lump, I open the door to a rumpled middle-aged man. “Come in and sit down. I’ll put the kettle on.” “Sure. Thank you,” he says awkwardly. On…
Read MoreOf the Cat’s Deathly Inquiries Racquel Lee __________ A cat, such a small, antsy little thing, asks one question when one of its lives has been taken. Each question that was asked— whether the death was minuscule or significant in its impermanence, whether that death was something that could’ve been…
Read MoreHope is the thing with feathers Mark LaMonda __________ For some reason it seemed that most of what was in our house was either my father’s or my sister’s. My mother had been dead for three years, and my father favored my sister. But, my father did give me an…
Read MoreThe New Human Shelagh Hardrich __________ She heard it before she understood it. A sound like the mountain clearing its throat — low and rolling, wrong in the way thunder was wrong when there was no cloud. She was inside, in the good warm spot near the heating box, and…
Read MoreClues Blues Hunter Cooley __________ “We got ourselves in a rough spot, Ms. Dutchess. Give it to me straight.” Spade barked. “I told you. That’s all I know, Mr. Spade.” “Tuesday. Run me through it.” “I was in bed, sir.” “Out by 2 p.m.? Must have had something on your…
Read MoreThe Empty Veranda Swetha Amit __________ I don’t remember it the way most people do. It comes back in fragments—the heat on my skin, a flash of white paws just out of reach. The rest has been filled in by Ma, who recalls that day as if it never loosened…
Read MoreOutlook Good! Mikki Aronoff and Katherine Silver-Hajo __________ Math exam looming, me procrastinating, I tune in to the probability of a passing grade like a luminous radio dial, unfazed by the static of Long John Silver’s tatty parrot, shoulder-bound but hankering for a branch, squawking salty bilge—Pieces of nine! Pieces…
Read MoreSolomon and the Cheese Arm Eli S. Evans __________ An adaptation of a story from Le Petit Nicolas series, by René Gosciny, with input from Eli Evans’s son __________ We didn’t have school this morning, but that wasn’t any fun because instead we had to we had to go to…
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