There was a sense of peace, anticipation, and of place when I arrived at the Krispy Kremes that cool October morning; autumn leaves turning and the sun bright over the roofs of Asheville and the surrounding mountains. It was a Friday, before school, and coffee and glazed donuts beckoned while waiting for Mariah, my girlfriend, and walking on to the bus stop. Suppressed an urge to talk her into skipping school; we had fifth-period English together, and it was our chance to read our story assignments.
Continue reading “Indian Summer by Mike Lee”Tag: teens
Homecoming Queen by Adam Dorsheimer
Concerning Boys and Men
Shirley was eavesdropping one night when she heard her mother say that lonely people can’t help but do terrible things. She was bedridden, her mother, laid up with a debilitating melancholy after her latest episode. Her father was in there with her. Shirley imagined him to be glowering over the bed, hands on his hips, but she couldn’t be sure.
Continue reading “Homecoming Queen by Adam Dorsheimer”The Accident by Courtney Jean Day
‘Andrew, we need to talk.’
Andrew pauses for a moment, glaring at the torn Skinny Puppy poster he has taped to the inside of his locker. He feels like complete and total ass. He’d been up much too late the night before, doing bong hit after bong hit alone in his room, studying The Anarchist’s Cookbook in confused fascination. Just think of it – kablooe! He’d set it off in the Headley-Royce parking lot where the school royalty congregates, sitting on the hoods of their sixteenth-birthday Mercedes, sneering down at him as he trudges up the hill from the bus stop.
Continue reading “The Accident by Courtney Jean Day”Blood Lovers by Gerald Coleman
At the haggard edges of New York City, the Fourth Avenue Local of the RR Line started or ended, depending upon your intentions, at Ninety-Fifth Street on the far ass-end of Brooklyn, where the city skyline was but an aspiration. You could barely see the Statue of Liberty if you were on a rooftop and knew where to look.
Continue reading “Blood Lovers by Gerald Coleman”Joker by Kaela Li
Our love language is card games.
Idiot expresses our affection and respect, BS is our way of checking in with each other. War to express our shared frustrations. Spit and Blackjack to say hello and goodbye. A jack secretly gifted in the hallways between class is an inside joke. A queen is empowerment, when the hours get too long. A two is permission to rock the boat and get wild.
Continue reading “Joker by Kaela Li”Emergence Delirium by Danielle Altman
They found me floating face down in the motel swimming pool, a seedy place off the Sunset Strip where we’d been partying. A janitor heard the splash. He dragged me up to the patio and slapped my cheeks, which was funny. I was already blue, and now some random guy was hitting me. We kissed. His breath choked me. I woke, briefly. Curled over, shivering on the lip of the deep end, my reflection rippling beneath as my lungs spasmed dry.
Continue reading “Emergence Delirium by Danielle Altman”Acid Drop by Samantha Barrow
A ring of strawberry lipstick circles the smoothed edge of the blunt as she passes it to me, and I try, I really do, not to imagine what it would be like to kiss her—to taste the berry directly from her lips instead of getting my hit secondhand from this pineapple flavored cigarillo wrapper.
I’m unsuccessful.
Continue reading “Acid Drop by Samantha Barrow”