SHORT STORIES
Other Significant Others: A Glossary by Gauraa Shekhar
Ages 17–19 Aging English Rockstar Who Threatened to SueHe tells you about his daughter between mouthfuls of dragon rolls, dabbing the truffle off his upper lip scruff with the corner of a napkin. He lost her to cancer before…
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The Night He Said I Love You by K.C. Mead-Brewer
Shelly died first. Some combination of tuberculosis and an ancient family curse. Then her ghost killed Dan, strangled him with his own bed-curtains. They both agreed to leave Good Boy alive—the game is Ghost Children, not Ghost Dogs. Shelly…
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As I Make My Crooked Way by Jules Hogan
I want to be a better person, so I hide my bad habits. When I lived alone, in a chilly, oceanside city, I let the evidence accumulate like flotsam around me. Now, I’m twenty-seven and I live in my…
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Ball by Siamak Vossoughi
This shape, he said to his niece as he tossed her the ball on the grass. This roundness, this perfection of throwing and catching, this can be the thing for a good long while. He did not tell her…
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Daughter by Isha Karki
The day you killed your mother, you wished your father dead. A whole life of could-bes glittered in your mind. A beauty parlour for your mother, reams of thread and pots of sticky wax. A lunchbox business, stacks of…
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Wolf Girls by Allie Dokus
At the time, she was Xandra. The decapitated torso of Alexandra. Her given name was Mary, but do you see Marys anywhere but behind the fluorescent Market Basket checkout, looking depressed and forty? September, seventh grade, the Latin teacher…
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Friday to Monday by Joy Guo
That Friday night, on her way back from the library, Jia saw a boy in a baseball cap coming toward her. She listed to the side, knelt to tie one shoe, then the other, hoping he’d walk past. But…
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Big Feelings by Ian Saunders
When you arrive, the boy is perched on the kitchen island with a serrated knife in his hand. Stabbing at the vacuum-sealed top of a plastic cereal bag. When he sees you in the doorway, he grins a wild…
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Nest by Erin Slaughter
Kate had been huffing around the house since our dad died, and now she was convinced our dead dad was inhabiting a fly she found stuck buzzing between her bedroom blinds the morning of the funeral. Also, she had…
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Call Her No One by Frances Ogamba
On the day the buyer is to come, my aunt and I put a green dress on the baby, sleek her hair, and fit a cap on her. The baby’s socks are different―one is yellow with two white stripes,…
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