What you have to understand is that I love my father. I really do. And I think that in his own way, he loves me, even if I’ve always been a disappointment to him when compared to my older brother, which isn’t the end of the world. Is it unfortunate? Yes, it most certainly is, but whether we want to admit it to ourselves or not, most parents play favorites.

The seaside village in which they had chosen to spend their vacation was replete with what, for lack of a better word, they had been referring to as “jigglers”: little machines taking the form of this or that mode of transportation – a race car, a propeller airplane such as that in which they had arrived, a two-humped (or, for that matter, one- humped) camel –

They freeze up as would predators in thanatosis, dead in their tracks, dead but not really. We want to tell them: Wait, you mindless landed expansionists and extractivists, the Adivasis whose forests you've set ablaze are coming for your heads.

Google is his doctor and his therapist. His mother. His obsessive searching has been at an all-time high this past month, ever since that rainy night in June when we sat on the bathroom floor with our backs against the drywall, holding hands and staring at the results of my third pregnancy test.

Then she was a child in an ancient woman’s body in a hospital bed staring out the window at the reeds still snow-covered in March and I was a child in a young woman’s body staring at her. Her tongue and hands, those old weapons, now frozen, all parts of her nearly extinguished, I could have felt peaceful or forgiving or vengeful but instead I felt sorry, terribly sorry, an apology blooming in my chest like a bouquet of knives.

“Have you seen the kids lately, James?” I asked. Not because I wanted to know about the kids. They were doing normal kid things, like going to piano lessons and auditioning for the lead in the school play. But because I couldn’t help but wonder if, in their absence, James had become a tangle of wires left in a junk drawer.

I thought I’d get a monkey soon after The Thing That Was Done To Me. It felt right, like I could prove I can be in charge of something.

Nick stood, his ripped jeans and ratty T-shirt swallowing his lanky frame, and walked over to the stereo. At the press of a few buttons, Radiohead’s “Karma Police” filled the room. It was his favorite song; He was a fan of the entire CD, applauding what he called its “progressive melding of dissonance and harmony” and “lyrical rejection of normative behaviors.” Shelley didn’t really get it but nodded along thoughtfully to his interpretation.

Darling stayed in the back to check the sound level and wait for late arrivals—there were none—and then went back to her desk. She hoped there was a candy bar or some chips in her drawer. She was starving. Her phone was blinking. It was probably her boyfriend, confirming he was going to bring dinner and watch the 8:30.

I was here yesterday and got reunited with Sal. Not out of the ordinary, in a town this size. She had on dirty jeans and a T-shirt that said, Gardening is for Lovers. “One edible before working in the garden helps me stay mellow,” Sal said.

Each year she gave him a new yo-yo. When he was eight, she gave him his first grown up Duncan. “You’re ready for this now,” she said. She could no longer climb the stairs, so she’d stand at the railing of the back porch and watch Freddie practice in the yard. The secret to successful yo-yo play, she told him, was long sleep times.

He immediately went back to Erika’s reference. His first impulse was that he now had to write the best, most helpful letter that he’d ever written. He felt a bit frozen at that. But as he thought about it more, Grady began to wonder if Erika would have been able to write such a glowing recommendation, particularly in the time immediately after their breakup.

“What do we have to lose?”

I couldn’t argue with that. But I wasn’t sure how I ended up being the one who had to call. Something about how I looked more like Rob. I didn't think that should have mattered since we were calling it in, and no one would have mistaken me for Rob. But I found myself on the phone anyway.

Now Adrienne turns her attention back to the original question Ray had asked her, the one about where she met her spouse. Thinking about it, she admits to herself that yes, for most people (including Ray) that should be an easy thing to answer, but for her it’s not.

“What if you knew that it kind of irks me to find a perfectly good roll of toilet paper hanging there upside down?”

(Does toilet paper exist on other planets? Because we’re going to end up needing to find another planet once we can no longer survive on this one!)

The old woman smiled. “Stories can be lots of fun, but the best ones also help us learn. This story is like that. Many years ago, there was a girl who lived near here. Her name was Vivian, but everyone called her Vivi, just like everyone calls you Mimi. She was much like you, in fact.”

I took the money from my pocket and gave it to her. She put it in a brown leather change purse, got up and walked away. I held the oranges to my nose, inhaling their sweet, pungent aroma as I watched the pigeons create a pathway for her as she sauntered through them.

My feet hit the gravel beneath me and I hear shouting in the distance. I run faster, refusing to let my limbs give way before I see Diane waiting in the finish area, anxious for the baton.