little words

Drew and Kaleigh were finally going on vacation. They hadn’t gone in years, at least since their youngest was born. Now their two children, ages six and eight, were decently old enough to tolerate wearing their own tiny backpacks, and Kaleigh no longer had to wrestle the double stroller around. They were going to Edinburgh, the city of winding cobblestones and hills, narrow, ancient hallways of narrow, ancient homes. Kaleigh had painstakingly sifted through Airbnb to find a garden or ground-level flat in case her youngest, Holden, had one of his screaming, kicking, meltdowns. The mere thought of a polite knock on the door from a neighbor disturbed by Holden’s gremlin shrieks was enough for her to slightly stretch their budget for the ideal spot. But here she was at Target, a mere twelve hours before the flight, collecting the odds and ends of all she had missed on the to-do list that seemed to grow rather than shrink. The laundry had been started a week ago, an ongoing project that str...

  A woman awakes with a start and is suddenly aware of a curious smell. No, a chorus of smells: perfumes, baked goods, and plastic, all tinged with an underlying scent of rot.  Is that a hint of basil and feta?  Her eyes blur with sleep, but her surroundings gradually come into clearer vision as she blinks herself awake. The woman is in a parlor of sorts. The room has gabled windows with heavy curtains drawn tight. She puts her hands down and feels something smooth, but when she applies more pressure to stand up, the surface snaps into coils. She looks down to see what her hands are feeling and sees that she is sitting atop a mound of slap bracelets: fuzzy, velvet, and in rainbow and psychedelic shades. There must be thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, rippling in a psychedelic sea that fills the room. She couldn’t resist sweeping her hands over the rippling bands. But then, she notices a set of unblinking eyes buried deep inside the snap bracelets, staring up at he...

Katy finally got an invite for a Friday night. She had spent most weekends that school year in her dad’s overstuffed Lay-Z-Boy recliner mindlessly watching show after show, mowing through snack after snack. But one Monday morning, Amber sat by her in study hall. It was weird for someone like Amber to even be in study hall—usually the AP kids packed their schedules full with advanced classes and study hall was seen as a waste of time. And Amber was one of those all-around star students: an Honor Roll athlete who, when she wasn’t serving straight aces at the varsity volleyball games, was flipping across the gymnasium during the pep rallies. She was the president of Fellowship of Christian Athletes and was always the first to volunteer to pray aloud for the group at any opportunity. Katy felt equally perplexed and in awe of her. But here she was first thing on a Monday morning in study hall, sitting by Katy, drinking a SlimFast, and reading a thick, worn Bible. Its pages were well worn an...