The loser’s dead, the text read. How do you know? Asha sat down in her office chair. She’d been about to go across the street to buy her regular chicken wrap for lunch but her growling stomach could wait. There wasn’t any need for her to clarify the identity of the deceased. The only person […]

I got to meet the cold thing living inside my dad that June I turned fifteen. I don’t know how long it’d been hiding in him. Maybe always. Or maybe he’d caught it, the way you catch a cold, that night he dove to the oyster beds. All I know is, on that blanched coral […]

It started with a dream about a grey boy who called my name. Charlie. Charlie . . . Charlie. How do you know my name? You told it to me in a dream. My dream or your dream? Yes. I grew up powdered-milk, water-down-the-ketchup poor; on a diet of soupy mac-and-cheese and fried bologna. Fruit was a luxury. […]

The magnolias were in full bloom the day Miralyn Liang found the envelope addressed to her, penned in her dead mother’s hand. Tucking it in her dress pocket, she climbed back down the ladder, wincing as her bare feet hit the cold concrete of the garage floor. If Laura had been there, she’d have insisted […]