The summer I was eight years old, I came for the first time...I remember mom in her red dress. Rose tinted glasses, big plastic earrings and a bottle of Nehi in her hand. I remember how she smelled that day, but more than that, I remember the smell of dirt and fresh cut grass. I remember the nervous flutter in my belly, and I remember his smile and ( Read more... )

Yesterday, I didn't think anything of it. I came by, stuck my head in the door, and moved on. She isn't always in her room, and it wasn't the first time I checked around the compound and the grounds and didn't find her. Probably down on the beach. Whatever. I'll see her later, I thought, and wandered back upstairs for coffee ( Read more... )

Some days, I step out of the compound, onto grass and sand, look out over the playground just in the distance, and I expect to see the cars circling the trees, windows down and the shadowed faces inside. I half expect to get picked up, a guy with a fifty burning a hole in his wallet. A husband. A boyfriend. A loser too fucked up to be anything but ( Read more... )

Self-flagellation. It's just like that. Only less fun ( Read more... )

It wasn't like Sam exactly planned this ( Read more... )

The day started off normal enough. I sort of had a routine by now. It started with breakfast. Mostly I just found a corner where there weren't many people and ate as quickly as possible. I would next stop by the Rec Room. I had finally gotten up the nerve, or maybe the boredom had finally become too much, and pulled a book off of the shelf. I was ( Read more... )

In about fourteen years, if all goes accordingly, this place is gonna have a major fucking problem. We're gonna be knee-deep in teenagers, kids who'll know more and be more comfortable here than we ever were, but instead of a band of fucked up, unwanted little bastards, these kids'll actually have families. 'Cause all the kids being popped out left ( Read more... )

In her time back home, Octavia had seen a fair number of deaths, but illness was a subject with which she wasn't well acquainted, and so the news of Isabel in the clinic hit her harder than she might have expected. They hadn't known each other an especially long time, true, but she still cared about the other girl; knowing that there was little she ( Read more... )

It'll never be for me what it is for Logan. That sense of freedom. Of flight. I come out here because it's relaxing. Because I like the water. The speckly, sparkly surface of the waves. Cool rushing salt water and that dull roar blocking out everything else. It's quiet out here because it's so damn loud. The whole damn island might break apart and ( Read more... )

[Timed to last night ( Read more... )