2145 3 3
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Marie shrugs. “Maybe she’s just late. Come on, let's wait by the jungle gym.” She runs over and starts climbing. The jungle gym is closest to the path that goes into the woods and down into the canyon. She has to get him into the woods somehow.
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2145 13 3
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The two were huddled in a corner of an alley, joined by some others that I’m sure wandered into the darkness when they realized they were far from alone. That alley was the one off Market Street. I used to steal candy from the corner shop when I was nin
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2144 5 2
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this one was abandoned... a splinter left under the skin, pushed out by protective flesh
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2144 2 1
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“Cheng Ho didn’t go just Cape Horn; treasure ships visit Australia and America. His very advanced compass. Not just point north-south. Show east-west too.”
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2144 6 3
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Doc and I talked for several hours. When I told him Mona was pregnant, he turned his head and looked at me. “Who's the father?” he asked. Don't know, I said. Mona didn't know, either.
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2144 0 1
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“I heard your dad took out the Dairy Queen drive-thru,” said Pat.
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2144 13 13
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He stays a couple of yards behind me as we slog uphill. I try to diffuse the tension with a coy toss of head, slip on wet leaves. My ankle rolls and I splat noisily down. From my new angle his beard looks less stylish—bristles straggle all up his neck. He maintains…
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2144 8 6
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His middle name was Perceval. He judged the first Miss America contest in 1922. He saw himself primarily as a storyteller in the Dickensian mode.He claimed to be an illustrator rather than an artist. He disliked driving but loved to walk, and preferred…
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2144 8 2
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Later that night, he lay his shivering children in his own bed, the bed that betrayed and abandoned him just a few years ago. It will protect them now.
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2143 0 0
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[continued from part one...]After sweeps, my schoolwork started to slip. I had trouble paying attention in class, and my workbooks and tests came back from the teacher marked in ketchup red ink. I had always been a good student, and this academic…
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2143 7 4
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When they called him down there to the morgue to identify the body, he drove behind the wheel of his truck like some steady maniac on a long haul. The Ford 150 cried out for new shocks, but that hardly mattered. Mud plastered side panels and…
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2143 12 8
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Two-way conversation with God.
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2142 10 5
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I scare my daughter when she sleeps because she thinks I'm going to kill her.
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2142 16 11
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He runs a mail-order business from a storefront and distributes a catalog of disappeared things.
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2142 29 12
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Night fell and the photographer slept, one hand between Prue's legs.
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2142 3 4
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Out the window is an empty birdbath, dry flaky concrete ring, no birds.
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2142 16 16
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There's a mirror in front of me and I thought it was so I could see myself, but I didn't want to see me.
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2142 21 15
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“Last night the Scots invaded Sweden,” I wrote, “to retrieve the silver filched from the Irish the Norwegians had in their coffers when Sweden conquered. The Swedes offered the Nobel to a Scots writer to keep ... the peace."
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2141 8 5
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I ask for your patience with this form message, as it is part of a system that ensures
every submissive ex lover is considered separately, since I am involved in a lot of anonymous sex.
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2141 10 4
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"I sighed heavily. 'Goddamn it...' I spat under my breath. 'Every motherfucking time..."
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2141 15 7
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the boredom inherent in living in the suburbs
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2141 3 2
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'Yer a cool, cool glass of water baby....'
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2141 6 1
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I can feel the souls
of those who perished
here
They’re still here
like old kites
hanging in the sky
tattered, but they
won’t come down
or can’t come down
just yet
because they haven’t
fulfilled their
unborn promises
t
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2141 15 10
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chet baker shades my eyes
rippling through the cool water
sometimes we feed the fish
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2141 1 1
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I rummage around to see which of our many countertop appliances might do the trick. Yogurt maker? No, I need something with more muscle.
The Cuisinart--just the thing! I pick through the detachable blades—where’s the isotope shredder?
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2141 13 14
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I don't know if we'll meet again in the sea of light. Circumstances aren't only up to human beings. After all maybe it's all drunk circumstance, but that doesn't answer the blinding question, it only poses some more. This is…
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2140 12 2
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...a blunt thrust of a face, uncongenial in profile, and the ubiquitous green cap that says John Deere, with the yellow ideogram of a deer for graduates of our local schools.
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2140 8 8
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You just watch, the schoolteachers’ll be next and then you’ll see shit go down. Imagine what happens when a fifth-grader sees his teacher getting frog-marched through a crowd on YouTube.
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2140 3 1
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I have never met Joe’s brother, of course.
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2140 0 0
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At night, on these New England roads, there is no light, no pink sodium-vapor glow, no guideposts.
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