Psssst!

I startled so hard that the bubblegum I had been stealthily blowing popped like an electric fuse.

“Winter! Stop fidgeting,” my math teacher, Ms Treacle, shrieked. “This is a test and others are still working.”

She said it as if I wasn’t. Which wasn’t exactly wrong. No matter how hard I tried, the page of algebraic equations stood there on the page meaningless, despite hours of math tute...

“Truth or dare?”

The question was a dare itself, punctuated by those piercing eyes, burnt honey in color, that, Good Gods, made me putty in her hands.

“Truth.” I whispered, so that she had to lean closer to hear. The truth was always a risky move. More dangerous than a sharpened weaponed, someone had once said. Nietzsche, perhaps?

Anyway, I couldn’t risk another dare. Our last round had both ...

A plate, one that my mother had given us for our wedding, splintered into smithereens against the wall just to the left of my ear.

“Jesus, Trisha!” I barked, flinching.

The plate breaking seemed also to break her spirit, for she went from fire-hot furious to a wilted flower drowning in tears.

I pinched the bridge if my nose, warding off a migraine. We had been at it since morning when Trisha, i...

“It’s a beautiful evening,” I remarked shyly as we exited the Metaverse Store and began our walk through the dimming downtown streets. It had been an all-day affair to find and secure Azha, and though the Metaverse’s Matchmaker assured me that Azha and I were well suited, I had the jitters.

She looked up at me, and I was once again stunned by her blond ringlets, which I had so admired in the cata...

There once was a teacher in training

Whose students he always was taming.

He taught them to jump,

To sit like a chump,

He bred them to ne’er be complaining.

Their ways he had tamed for a while,

They all sat and quietly smiled.

But smarter they were

Than him, this dullard,

So they waited like good juveniles.

The day came when trainer turned teacher,

The students were asked to be speakers,

But the...

“Margo Shelby!”

My name booms over the large crowd of District 9. The audience gasps as if by one collective reflex.

I knew this had been a possibility. We all did. How many times had Niamh and I role played this exact scenario, running through a thousand pretend Hunger Games, all of which we triumphed over with the same grace and flair as Katniss Everdeen.

Granted, playing pretend is one thing...

The baby was crying again. The baby was always crying these days. Small, pitiful whimpers that would quickly turn to long, piercing wails.

The kid had a pair of lungs, that much was sure. He had heard the cries all the way from the guardhouse of their expansive condominium, though he had hoped beyond hope that it was an ambulance siren or a fire drill or, better yet...

“Please God, be someone ...