THE UMBRELLA LADY
“She wasn’t paying attention? On her goddamn phone? She was supposed to be watching them!”
The mother’s voice cracked like a whip across the sterile walls of the police station. Christina sat slumped in the metal chair, mascara streaked down her face, shaking. Her phone was still warm in her pocket—still open to the FaceTime call she hadn’t ended, as Nikki listened in, trying to decipher the muffled madness.
“On fucking FaceTime, while my babies were out there alone! How could you?”
Christina choked on her tears. “I—I just looked down for a second. I had to pee. They were in the yard. They were right there.”
THE CRYSTAL IN THE WALL
Skipping school on Friday afternoons had become one of our senior-year rituals. With only study halls and gym left on our schedule, why the hell wouldn’t we? I didn’t have a car, but Donger did, so we’d pile in and drive around, hunting for new places to get high in a town where nothing felt new anymore. Tommy suggested we go on an adventure—hike out to the giant cross near the Russian monastery. Donger bitched about potholes and gas, like he always did, but finally caved to our relentless peer pressure.
GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: THE BOY WHO COULDN’T SLEEP
I hadn’t really slept since we moved into the house on Church Street, even though I finally had my own room.
I mean, I slept a little, but not a deep sleep. Not dreamless sleep—the kind that washes over you and leaves you feeling whole in the morning. Every night felt like being buried alive in cotton—suffocating in slowness, dragged into a paralyzed fog where I couldn’t move, couldn’t scream, but something could touch me. And every morning, I woke weaker. Like I’d run a marathon in my dreams. Like something fed off me while I lay helpless.