Stacey comes home from school with a small wooden box. It has a hinged lid and is slightly smaller than a shoebox. It’s varnished and is quite dark in colour, but not black. The design is very simple and rustic. It’s the kind of box someone might make in a woodworking class, but Stacey’s only […]

The river brought the man, but Grace let him spend the deep night on the softly-ferned bank, refusing to budge from the tuff walls of the old granary to bring him in from the darkness. Hunger clawed at her belly. She had not been outside for two weeks. Morning light was slow to pierce the […]

Devyn visits the Winchester Mystery House on a rainy day in San Jose. The house is a mess of architectural features, all spindlework and stickwork, red scalloped shingles, rooms jutting out everywhere—an asymmetrical madness. Despite this chaos, the house is beautiful, with yellow walls and so many windows. An enormous layer cake of a house, […]

Families moved into the underwater pods at staggered times, so we never met our neighbors. On the long car ride to the ocean, as the air became saltier and the types of trees changed outside the windows, it felt like a beach trip. In the trunk, in Dad’s cooler, ice sloshed around as it melted. […]