My son is on the field. My son is throwing a ball. My son is throwing a ball into a mitt. My husband is recording the number of times the ball is thrown. My husband is making little pie shapes in his book. He is making little marks.

Abby sat on the slate floor of the strange kitchen and gagged: Mr. Titters's end had precipitated a surge of diarrhea—frothy, moist, and impossible to expunge entirely from the white carpet, as if he had became an icing tube in…

I staggered away in the storm tears frozen to my cheeks.