My big brother Jon packed a snowball with mittened hands. “It’s fake.” “What’s fake?” I knew what he was about to say. Sometimes when it’s your brother you just have to listen. He threw the snowball at me. “The snow. Fake. Made of plastic.” He started making another snowball. I wondered how much he’d had to drink. I hadn’t seen many bottles, but sometimes he hid the bottles. He’d been going downhill since his wife left hi...
“I really despise this couch. Everything about it. You need to get a new one, or I’ll stop coming to these little chats.” “Focus, Daniella,” the therapist’s voice is low and colorless, like a forced kind of calming. “You were going to tell me about that night in the village, please, let’s just stick to talking about what happened that night.” Daniella fidgets, her lithe frame squirming as if her tattoo-covered skin is cra...
Charlotte Hale hated that she had to gather wild berries. It wasn’t that gathering wild berries was hard. It was that gathering them was not hard and at sixteen, she felt like it was demeaning. Her eight-year-old stepbrother, Albert, was perfectly capable of the task. So she could not, for the life of her, understand why she had to be the one to gather stupid frickin’ wild berries. “I need them for the salad, Char,” her m...
Some say only ducks truly enjoy the rain. They obviously have not met Kerstin. “You’re stark-raving mad, you know that?” I call out to her from the bungalow’s front porch. “We haven’t seen the sun for three days. These puddles may very well be my only chance at a pool.” She jumps, splashing both feet like a rebellious child with a rose-colored pout. “At least we’ll save on sunscreen!” She has that carefree aura; the typ...
