I Hardly Ever Look at It - Julie Farrar

You know, I hardly ever look at it. It sits there on my right temple, exactly three eighths of an inch away from my eyebrow, but I hardly even glance at it on an average day. No telling how long that age spot – about the size and color of a basketball – has been forming because, you see, I hardly ever look at it.

It’s practically invisible to me every night when I slather on Olay Regenerist night cream, following by Olay Definity anti-spot treatment. Rarely do I take note of whether or not it’s faded ever so slightly after two months of my bedtime regimen because, you see, I’m not vain in the least and I think aging is a wonderful, natural thing.

All of the lines and creases and spots are nothing to fear; they represent experience rather than a growing state of decline. So I hardly ever look at it. And after all, the dermatologist doesn’t seem worried. She assured me that it is not some malignant melanoma that will grow and eat away at my face until I look like a member of the Skeleton Army in “The Mummy.” Just to be on the safe side, though, I better slap on SPF 70 sunblock with Helioplex in it (don’t know what that is, but all the magazines say that it’s essential in any sunblock worth it’s SPF). No worries. What do you think? Would I look better if I grew my bangs a little longer?

Waking in the Middle of the Night - Joyce Roschinger

Waking in the middle of the night, I think about work, about my elderly parents growing older in a house slowly falling apart around them, about my writing, that I will never be able to write a novel, a short story, a poem.

That's when I get up, make a cup of tea and sit at the kitchen table and read. A story by Chekhov, another story by Nabokoh and suddenly I am in another place and time... I overhear a small group of men talking about love in Chekhov's story "On Love" . Later I see the lovely icicles and feel the the winter sun in Nabokov's story "The Vance Sisters". That's when it begins. Sleep comes in slowly like low lying fog. Soon it settles in all the peaks and valleys of my mind.

Waking in the Middle of the Night - Bonnie Smetts

The ending with my momma begins when a Mrs. Watson comes to visit us. I couldn’t a been but eight or so, too young to understand why a Mrs. Watson would be squeezed into our living room, if you could call it that. She wanted to sit down and momma was rushing around pushing the papers off the couch and shoving the bottles and ashtrays under it and all the while acting stranger than a sick dog. So I’m not understanding a thing except momma’s having a fit inside.

Seems as obvious to me as the full moon outside, but she’s pretending we’d just been rearranging things and that’s why the room’s a mess, like it never was anything but a mess. The Mrs. Lady finally sits down. And she’d made it clear she wanted to talk to me too other wise I’d been outside and gone the minute she showed up. But she kept talking to me, how’s your school, how’s your friends, do you like to help your mom making dinner. A kid can smell something’s up when they’re asking questions like. Make dinner? I’d watched enough TV to know what she meant by that. And I’d watched enough to pretend that yes of course we cooked in pots, eat on dishes and then wash them up. That’s why there’s a big black garbage bag next to the sink. Momma didn’t think to push that into the bathroom or something and the lady’s looking at me too hard for me to be of any help saving my momma.

So we’re all sitting now, actually I’m sitting on a table ‘cause we’re out of chairs, there being only half the couch not covered with stuff and one kitchen chair not broken. So I’m here to be sure Rawling’s getting all she needs for school and growing up, or something like that, Mrs. Watson says. Then the subject of the boyfriends comes up and that’s when the Mrs. says straight at my momma that young girls shouldn’t have to be sharing the house with too many boyfriends. And momma’s saying she only sees the boyfriends for tea during the day. And I’m sitting on the edge of the coffee table, my legs swinging like some big clock because I hate to see my momma have to lie. Even at eight years old, I know there ain’t one bit of tea ‘round here for 100 miles.

So after that I was sleeping better for a while ‘til one day I wake up in the middle of the night, hearing furniture banging and whispering so loud my momma may as well been screaming. I know the boyfriend’s back. Then I hear the voices outside and I look out my window to see what’s going on and that’s when I see this boyfriend shove my momma in the car. They drive away. I’m all alone.

I Hardly Ever Look at It - Trina Wood

I know it’s there, in the thin top drawer of my desk, but I hardly ever look at it. It’s usually buried under address labels, odds and ends, hidden among life’s detritus, but I know it’s in there someplace.

Sometimes when I’m fishing around, searching for an extra stamp, my fingers sift it from the pile, an archaeologist’s find that brings pause. When I find it, I’m reminded and surprised that my mother had it laminated—so people wouldn’t forget what he looked like? So they could use it for a bookmark? Who knows?

My brother stares out in two small wallet images, side by side, one in his dress blues, brass buttons starting just under his throat, and a white cap with black brim, a Marine insignia on the front. No smile, just a young face, like he’s a kid wearing his dad’s uniform for Halloween. A casual photo next to that, taken at the school district where he worked. No smile there either, which is weird because he was always clowning around, pulling practical jokes on his buddies, his girlfriend, even complete strangers.

He’d pretend to pull out of a parking space in a busy lot at the college where he’d go to pick his girlfriend up from class, a row of cars waiting behind them for a slot, rushing to park and get to class on time. He’d pull out a few feet and then pull back in, pull back out, pull back in, laughing so hard he would almost pee his pants, she said. He got such a kick out of pissing people off while he was just having fun.

At 23, he was still just a kid, no matter how much bravado he showed. I wonder who he would be now, whether he would have enlisted from the reserves to go full time into the Marines where he felt part of another family, a brotherhood. Or a fuck-up who landed in jail? He could have gone either way really. I’ll never know.

Here's the Story - Bonnie Smetts

Here’s the story. Like I said, this ain’t no memoir of story, just my own. So I, Rawling Summer, made some important decisions ever before I was 18. All the girls in Nordeen was planning and giggling and buzzing with excitement about going to beauty school, Every Last One of the Them. Now how many salons can you stick behind how many houses in Nordeen? I ask myself. Seems like every other house’s has got sign, some streets just smell like a beauty parlor, the whole damn street.

No way, I say to myself. That’s when I decide I’m gonna be a court reporter. I was looking through one of those beauty magazines, the kind where I have to look to find those ads for brassieres for big girls. I’m called a big girl on account of my breasts, I’m as skinny as a stray cat, my legs is no bigger than my arms, not much of a chew if a bear decided to attack. But no, I got big breasts, I mean way too big. Nowhere in Nordeen, nowhere in Baton Rouge, could I find what I needed. And that’s the least of my problems with those breasts, especially before I learned how to use them. When I was twelve, I hadn’t learned that I had the power in them. Buddy, Harper, and the rest of those no good boys all wanted a feel. I should have been charging then, but then I was still terrified of those breasts. But thanks to them, I was there in the back of the beauty magazine. Those bras for big girls, no way you can make them pretty, but so the ad right next door with the offering “Make A Career in Criminal Justice” caught my eye. Guess I’d been thinking about what else to do beside the beauty school. Said you’d have an exciting time learning about criminals and all the bad things they’ve done.

Now I’ve got a curiosity bigger than my breasts, so I’m figuring I got the skills to do this job. They said you don’t even need to graduate high school, which was good since I didn’t (partly because of the breasts). I get invited down to take the test to see if I can join this exciting career of a court reporter. The test, I never seen such kind of tests, but I try with that big yellow pencil they give me. And praise to god, a few days later they tell me I can come. But they say I’m gonna have to work really hard. They also say I gotta pay $1,000. Now how the hell I’m coming up with that kind of money? I could buy a car for that. But they offer to give the money too, and I can pay them back. I tell them over the phone that I’m particularly qualified because I’ve already seen three dead people and I’m only just eighteen years old. And that was the beginning of hearing a lot more about dead people.

Here's the Story - Mark Maynard

Randy meets Allison. He is young and headstrong. She is beautiful and fun-loving. They begin dating and fall in love. Randy buys a ring and surprises Allison by proposing to her as they ride horses together on the beach. They push the wedding forward because Allison’s mom is terminally ill. Randy shares the first dance with Allison’s mom, slowly rolling her wheelchair around the dance floor to the music. They move into their first small home together – each begin new jobs and Allison becomes pregnant. Seven months into the pregnancy, Allison develops complications and must be hospitalized. Fifty miles away, Allison’s mom is put into hospice with weeks to live. On his way into the hospital to visit his wife, Randy runs into a girl he went to high school with that he has always been attracted to. Here’s the story.

Two friends, Steven and Dirk, are walking to school together. They live across the street from one another and are in the same fourth grade class. Steven’s parents are divorcing but haven’t told him yet. Dirk’s mother has told him about Steven’s parents but he is not allowed to mention it to his friend. It is a cold autumn morning and Steven has a bad cold but his mother did not want him to be home that day as she and her soon to be ex-husband had each taken the day off of work to finalize some paperwork and meet with attorneys. Steven’s throat is sore and he has a slight fever. Dirk’s been getting bullied by a fifth grader nearly every day for the past two weeks. Steven, his constant companion, has been watching this happen but saying nothing. A block from school, the dirt pathway dips out of sight into a small ravine before rising to the other side and just across a busy street from school. As the friends reach the bottom of the ravine, something rattles in the brush a few feet from the path. They hear the whimper of an animal in pain. Here’s the story.

Here's the Story - Ariana Speyer

We were down on the train tracks, playing around, and Frankie decides to put some fucked-up piece of a tire he found in the woods across the tracks, to see how it melts. Barbara and some of the other chicks were whining and telling him not to, but Frankie didn’t give a shit. That’s the story as you probably heard it. But here’s the story, the real story.

Frankie has a death wish, I swear. I’ve seen him drive his car into a tree, on purpose, and somehow survive, not a hair scratched on his head. And he was pissed. He was like, “Dude, I wanted to see what the other side is like.” I don’t know why he wants to see the other side. Seems like this side has enough going for it. And who even knows if there is another side, anyway?

So that day, Frankie wheeled a whole tire he found onto the train tracks and came up with this plan to sit on the tire like it’s an inner tube and he’s floating down a river or something. He figured that either the train guy would see him and stop or he wouldn’t and he’d die and that’s what he wanted anyway. So it was a win-win situation as far as Frankie was concerned. So all the girls are freaking out and telling him he’s crazy, he can’t lie on the train tracks, whining and crying. Finally they got so freaked out they left, they said they couldn’t watch him do that to himself.

Meanwhile, me and Jesse are looking at each other, like, “we know Frankie is fucked up, but is he that fucked up to do this?” Neither of us knew. And Frankie is just lying in his tire like he’s tire tubing or something. And of course he’s drinking a beer. He has a six-pack next to him and he might as well be watching the Super Bowl on TV, that’s how laid-back he was. He’s just watching me and Jesse, telling us to have a beer and enjoy the show. That we might never see anything else like this again. I thought that was probably true. I got kind of sick thinking about it, though. And I just thought, what am I going to tell my mother? I didn’t want to think that but I did. I knew she would just look at me like a piece of dirt if I was around and something that fucked up happened. It’s not that I care so much about Frankie. I just couldn’t bear to deal with my Mom.

So when the train started coming, even though Jesse and I hadn’t talked about any plan, we both knew what to do. As soon as it came close, we wrestled Frankie off the tracks and pinned him down with our bodies. It wasn’t easy, Frankie’s strong. The train just kicked the tire off the tracks and it skidded right next to us. Frankie finally became quiet and stopped struggling as the train went by. He just closed his eyes and I could tell he was thinking about something really far away.