“Little Little,” he said, “I have to see you right away!” “It’s dawn,” I said. “It’s too early.” “In Genesis it’s written that Abraham rose early to stand before the Lord,” he began, “and it is written there that Jacob rose early to worship the Lord. In Exodus it is written that Moses rose early ...
“A cat, that’s all. A cat.” “Put the box in the back of the truck.” “Shoo, cat! Scat!” Then for a long time, there were no human voices. The box they were in was picked up and put down many times. Shoebag had crawled out of the microwave and joined his family in the bottom of the box. It was a no...
Under The Toaster used to say of humans, “if someday creatures a hundred times their size gassed them — pffft — like they were mindless, heartless, unfeeling flecks of flesh, put on earth only to annoy them?” Shoebag’s heart broke remembering his father’s tirades against the human race. Ever sinc...
E. Kerr My real name is Marijane Meaker. When I first came to New York City from the University of Missouri, I wanted to be a writer. To be a writer back then, one needed to have an agent. I sent stories out to a long list of agents, but no one wanted to represent me. So, I decided to buy some ex...
That is Ms. Terripelli’s idea. She is our English teacher and she was the one who first got the idea to have real, live authors visit Leighton Middle School. She wants the author to feel welcome. You are my favorite author, I write. &nbs...
Even Hope jumped to her feet with most everyone in the audience, to applaud at the end of Oklahoma! It was Aunt Lizzie’s treat. She’d purposely picked out something that didn’t have anything in it about the war, or the Jews, or anything remotely controversial. Hope had come up from Virginia. She ...
SIXTEEN THAT SPRING, SOMETIMES TUCKER’S mother would study until three or four in the morning, and then report to Stirring Romances by nine thirty. Once Tucker found her hunched over some work, crying, at the kitchen table just as dawn was breaking. He had awakened to go to the bathroom, and at f...
It was on a bottom shelf alongside other cookbooks, and I could see that the last time it had been borrowed was in 2000. That became our mailbox. We left notes saying where we would be, and sometimes we just left love notes. It was easy for me, because in the summer I worked there five days a wee...
NICKI said. “I hitchhiked here.” “Through a driving rain just to be at my side?” “Something like that.” There was a cigarette dangling from her lips, and behind her, down a long hall, I could see the bar, and a red neon sign that said “This Bud’s For You!” … A couple of Siamese cats scurried past...
The warden said, “If my wife or Myra, the maid, appears, you are to ignore them.” When Myra went out to hang up clothes in the backyard, Slater would try to smile at her, touch his head in a little salute, almost manage a hello. The warden had told Slater she was on probation and could do housewo...
“Come and play with me, Catherine,” said Peke, who could not get enough of Catherine now. After all, she was his savior. “I am played out, Peke. I am not used to running around anymore. My hind legs give.” Catherine was stretched out on the old thick carpet by the fireplace while Peke stood over ...
She wasn’t interested in anything I had to say about Grandpa Trenker’s innocence. “He was there, in Germany,” she said. “None of them were innocent.” “He didn’t have anything to do with those concentration camps,” I said. “Oh Buddy, he was a German!” “Loyal to his own,” I said, “just the way you ...
Raleigh. She wrote her name on the chalkboard: Mrs. Burke. She said she was from Torrington, which was a town seven miles away. She had on a blue blazer with a shorter skirt than most of our teachers wore, and you could tell she wasn’t used to teaching because her heels were really high. She had ...