Chapter 1 On Sundays, Jeanine and I got ready for games together. We’d trade off whose apartment we met at. My apartment had the smaller bathroom, but in my bedroom was a big vanity mirror where we could smear on makeup, outline our lips and eyes with slick crayons, and watch our faces brighten and […]

1964 The sideshow is a part of me. Crimson and cream strips wind about the helices of my genes. If I listen closely, I can still hear the calliope, its fluting notes echoing in the water traveling through the pipes in the walls. Sometimes, the shouting of the warden takes on the authoritative bark of […]

1 “It sounds like cats dying.” She said it in the glum tone of a child only just now being introduced to the disappointments life had in store. Mark Provaunce felt a twinge in his chest at the sound of it, thinking for the third time that morning of how his little girl was not […]