Of all the things Alice is good at, she is the best at leaving. Jobs, lovers, apartments, things when they get difficult. There is not enough time in life, she thinks, for living and for trying to fix things that can’t be fixed.
Read MoreCape to Cairo
The lecture theatre I’m trying to enter holds three hundred, but the security doors only admit two people at a time. Smart. I wait with the gang — Isha, Barb and Zach — in the underground atrium.
Read MoreNot Smart, Not CleverCharlotte and Nessa met in Year Eight of Narrabri High School. Charlotte’s family were licensed refugees from the burning lands and the flooded coast, not quite landed, but a step apart from refugees that didn’t have dog tags.
Read MoreFalling LeavesThe ghost in my attic is Margaret, but she lets me call her Margie. She was seventy–six years old when she died, and now that she’s a ghost she sits in her rocking chair day and night, holding a tiny baby in her arms.
Read MorePaperclips and Memories and Things That Won’t Be Missed
By the time Lila and Bridger arrived, the sitting room floor was already part savannah. Yellow grass grew on dirt where hardwood had once been. The border between grass and floor hissed and threw up sparks as the savannah crept towards the davenport on one side, the longcase clock on another and towards Lila on a third.
Read MoreRepairing the World“I used to think the sky would peel open,” the girl with the green hair confesses, curling black–nailed fingers around a can of Pabst. “I always had bloody knees, because I never looked down when I walked — I’d clasp my eyes to the sky, bracing myself for the sight of a gigantic hand pulling aside the clouds.
Read MoreThe Cultist’s SonMy death smells like cold steel and hot vomit. I touch my head and feel the cranial cap tightly holding in the fragments of my skull. I also have three metal snowflakes in there.
Read MoreSteel Snowflakes in My SkullIn infancy she hated first diapers, then dolls. Later she hated the school bus, her eagerly smiling teachers, insipid songs about scissor safety, and standing in line for soggy meat and cheese sandwiches she didn’t even want to eat.
Read MorePerfectRobin called it an apartment, but it was really part of an old carpet factory in the Junction: an echoing space where one of the looms used to be, furnished with a broken church pew, two wheelchairs, and the bench seat from a minivan.
Read MoreThe End of the World in Five Dates