The Atlas

The frayed Atlas, like most of Trina’s clothes and books, was a hand-me-down from her thirteen-year-old cousin sister, Paramita. The clatter of steel utensils being washed in a neighbouring flat mingled with the notes of a hit Bollywood song that played on someone’s radio. Trina’s own noisy house was peaceful for a change.

The Artist Spoke

Now, he didn’t feel alone in this frenetic crowd thanks to Beth’s presence. Yet he experienced a kind of pre-aloneness, pre-grief at their soon-to-come separation. He’d tried to intellectualize himself beyond it. He’d tried to articulate the absurdity of the situation: the absurdity of falling in love with her, of having fallen in love in the space of only a few hours.

Lucky

Patrick knows that Iris knows and Celia knows that Iris has told Gibb but no one told Patrick that Gibb knows so Gibb has to pretend he doesn't know a thing.

Farm Girl

Her grace, deportment, and posture were the sensation of Vivan Rutenbeck High School. At the twelfth grade talent show she walked back and forth across the stage three times balancing all seven volumes of “Remembrance of Things Past” on her head.

Recreational Genocide

I get so focused when coding that I forget everything. The world falls away, and there’s nothing between me and lines of logic.
That kind of focus is dangerous. You don’t see what’s coming at you, and before you know it, you’re in a situation you didn’t want to be in with no way out.

Prairie Dog Town

“Let me tell you something I tell my history students. Maybe you’re old enough to get it. The difference between an extremist and a revolutionary is that the latter has popular support.