It was dawn, and the smell of last night’s campfire still hung in the air. Daphne knew that smell well: It would permeate her clothes, her tent, even her car for the next few weeks, after she’d gone back home. Back to the daily mundanities of life: rush around, be responsible, interact with people she…

Ginger could hear them talking on the other side of the door. “Hi, honey, I’m home.” That was Dad. He was coming in from work, which meant it was about half past five. He shut the front door behind him. “Oh hi.” That was Mom. She was standing in the opening that separated the kitchen…

Mabel hadn’t been expecting an Amazon package, but one was leaning against her apartment door. She’d been on her way to the grocery store. It was Tuesday morning, and her shift at the diner started at 4 on Tuesdays. Tuesday and Thursday, just the dinner rush. Mondays off, thank goodness, because the other four days…

“Hey, hi. How are you doing today?” “I’m fine. How are you?” Jacqui scrunched up her eyebrows, looking confused. “I’m good. But I heard about your aunt.” “Yeah. Aunt Keiko.” A motion caught my attention in my peripheral vision, so I turned my head and looked out the window. A cardinal had landed on a…

Alice looked at the reflection in the mirror. She was dressed as her most famous namesake: A yellow dress with puffed sleeves covered by a white pinafore, tailored to match Tenniel’s first color illustrations. When she said she was dressing as Alice in Wonderland for the Halloween party at work, Jasmine, her wife, had suggested…

“My brother had long dreamed of being a police officer. In his mind, it was the perfect job: Enforcing the rules that society lives by, keeping people from doing wrong. He was consistently offended by the decay that he saw in the civil order. His writings were filled with despairing commentary on how people have…

“Jenny, come on, it’s time for school!” Jenny’s mother shouted up from the base of the stairs. Jenny had been in her bedroom, but she came out into the hallway to respond. “I can’t! Muffin’s missing!” Carol started to talk, then rolled her eyes and trotted up the stairs so she didn’t need to shout.…

“It’s important for us to be vigilant,” Mr. Honeycutt was saying, “against the cost modifications eroding market share.” “Vigilant,” Peter replied. “Yes.” Mr. Honeycutt gave him a sideways look and then turned back to the PowerPoint graph on the display screen. “Vii-GIL-lant.” Peter ran his tongue over his lips, savoring the flavor of the word.…

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”…