By the time Toby’s sister found him, he was well deep in his meltdown. He had tried to shut it down instead, he really had. He had felt it coming and had tried to push it back down. But his sister had left him feeling unmoored, and then the voice that she’d put in his…

My parents named me Leroy because it means “The King” in French. This is funny because the most famous song about someone named Leroy is a Jim Croce song about a tough guy who is “meaner than a junkyard dog”. But there aren’t as many songs about men as there are about women. There’s “Gigantic”…

A thing I like about finger painting is the feeling of the goo on my fingers. Paint brushes feel too much like pencils, which remind me of how messy my handwriting is and how judgmental my teachers were about that. I never really liked to write anyway. Words constrain me, even paint brushes constrain me.…

“Hey everyone, Harry here at the tent city seeing if I can find someone who’s hungry.” The voice was coming from behind the view, as the camera view itself bounced along to the pace of the speaker’s walking. “I stopped at City Lights Deli and picked up a bag full of sandwiches. They didn’t want…

Okay, so, I was in fourth grade, so that was like… 1979? I think? I was in the special education room because I was prone to meltdowns in school, some really violent ones, throwing things, screaming, that sort of thing. They’d given me an EI IEP… that stands for Emotionally Impaired. These days I probably…

“This is Jenny. She’s a little shy.” Jenny was aware that her mother was talking, addressing another adult in this new school that she was apparently supposed to attend now. Her family had moved across two states. In October. Apparently because her father had found his Dream Job, and so they’d had to move from…

“The thing is, I’ll never know if you really like my cooking.” I was standing over the stove, slowly stirring a pot of marinara sauce. “I do. I’ve said I do.” Miranda was sitting on the counter next to me, swinging her legs forward and letting them hit the dishwasher lightly before swinging them again.…

1 Michael didn’t like this. He was watching out the car window and rocking gently. This was not like the streets of home. His city was small, and he knew most of the streets, and this was a big road that wasn’t like that. His father was driving the car. His father looked very nervous,…

Had they come in through the window? Veronica was certain that she’d locked it last night, but this morning it was open, just a crack. Had she forgotten to lock it? Had a memory lapse allowed them in? Or maybe they had already been in the closet. Veronica’s eldest, Jase, had warned her about that.…