I usually took the bus, but one day my parents said they’d come to get me. We lived far out on a farm, and they were always working. That morning, …

A man lived with less than a quarter of his brain. He kissed his wife and kids goodbye every weekday and went to work. No one noticed anything was missing …

Cindy was seventeen when she developed a no-musician rule, too young to have it carry a real sense of threat, but heart-bruised nonetheless by the drummer who passed through her …

­Opal reaches across the cocktail table and clinks her bottle of Coors against mine.  “Forty is the new thirty!” she says and I force a smile but really, why did …

A real boyfriend will get blackout drunk and use the inside of your car as a urinal. A real boyfriend can be described in only two ways: worst boyfriend and …

  Before Downtown went to shit, a bunch of us used to work maintenance over at the Eastern Columbia building. There was no one there loved his job more than …

As the new personal assistant to the great El Misericordioso, I’ve come to learn a secret. He spends his weekends visiting homes for the aged throughout Veracruz. I suppose Señor …

Betty said it would be a nifty way to make a buck. She’d been car hopping up in Bakersfield and was raking it in. The whole drive-in concept seemed loony. …

For ten years my stepsons made sure their mother and I didn’t cross paths at hockey games, debate tournaments, their senior ring masses. My husband didn’t speak to his ex-wife. …

Olivia had her rituals to quiet the noise: running her hands over each leg to get her hosiery just so, only side-glancing at herself in the mirror once she was …

My pencil case is missing. It will turn up in a rearrangement of the universe, but my brain keeps fussing the small things. It is midnight when I take a …

There are no practice rooms in the old band building, so they use Mr. Hammond’s office for private lessons, the walls cushioned with foam to dampen the noise. The room …

When Owen shows me the photograph of the ghost dog, I say, “That’s a toy,” but I don’t laugh at him. I’m sitting in his desk chair in his room. …

My father was always doing something nuts. He rammed his car into the house after getting into a fistfight with another waiter. He came home drunk and cooked everything in …

“Come on, Grandpa, get up,” I said. Grandpa didn’t budge. He’d been sitting on that ratty, brown armchair for years. I tried once a day, then every few days, and …

I even slept with my prized guitar in my hands. How much I loved it. But while I was in the shower Dan Riccard snuck into my room and took …