It’s time of the granddaddy of them all, our sort-of-annual first paragraph challenge! Will your paragraph wow the masses? Do you have the first paragraph to end all first paragraphs?
We shall soon find out.
Let’s get to the good stuff. THE PRIZES!
The ULTIMATE GRAND PRIZE WINNER of the SUFPC will win:
1) The opportunity to have a partial manuscript considered by my utterly fantastic agent, Catherine Drayton of InkWell, whose clients include bestselling authors such as Markus Zusak (The Book Thief), John Flanagan (The Ranger’s Apprentice series) and Becca Fitzpatrick (Hush Hush), among others.
2) A signed advance copy of my novel, JACOB WONDERBAR AND THE COSMIC SPACE KAPOW, which is coming out in May:
3) The pride of knowing your paragraph was like the platonic ideal of first paragraphs it was so awesome.
The FABULOUS RUNNERS UP will receive the satisfaction of knowing that they were among the very best, as well as a query critique from yours truly.
There may also be honorable mentions, where still more satisfaction will be had.
So! Here’s how this works. Please read these rules carefully:
a) This is a for-fun contest. Rules may be adjusted without notice, but this one will always remain: please don’t take the contest overly seriously. This is for fun. Yes, the grand prize is awesome and I would have kidnapped a baby koala bear to have my manuscript considered by Catherine Drayton without so much as a query, but don’t let that detract from the for-funness of the contest. For fun. Seriously.
b) Please post the first paragraph of any work-in-progress in the comments section of THIS POST. Please do not e-mail me your submission. The deadline for entry is THURSDAY 4pm Pacific time, at which point entries will be closed. Finalists will be announced…. sometime after that. (Possibly Friday, possibly the following Monday, possibly the year 2032 but probably not the year 2032). When the finalists are announced you will exercise your democratic rights to vote for a stupendously ultimate winner.
c) Please please check and double-check and triple-check your entry before posting. But if you spot an error after posting: please do not re-post your entry. I go through the entries sequentially and the repeated deja vu repeated deja vu from reading the same entry only slightly different makes my head spin. I’m not worried about typos, nor should you be.
d) You may enter once, once you may enter, and enter once you may. If you post anonymously, make sure you leave your name.
e) Spreading word about the contest is strongly encouraged.
f) I will be sole judge of the finalists. You the people will be the sole judge of the ultimate winner.
g) I am not imposing a word count on the paragraphs. However, a paragraph that is overly long may lose points in the judge’s eyes. Use your own discretion.
h) Please remember that the paragraph needs to be a paragraph, not multiple paragraphs masquerading as one paragraph.
i) You must be at least 14 years old and less than 147 years old to enter. No exceptions.
j) I’m on Twitter! You can find me at @nathanbransford and I may be posting updates about the contest.
That is all.
GOOD LUCK! May the best paragraph win and may it be rather awesome.
The white wine Christina sipped was smooth, crisp, and cool. She barely noticed the taste of her second glass while she struggled to mirror its sophistication. Sitting on the veranda at the Villa d’Este, Christina’s focus wasn’t on Lake Como but on the con man sitting next to her, Senor Carlo Bargini. The calming effects of the wine helped her to feel less self-conscious in the tight white linen shift, but she knew not to get too relaxed at this juncture. The dress and wine were selected and paid for by Carlo. But not her. No, she couldn’t be bought so easily.
To keep her hands from trembling as she waited for the queen to arrive, Zilei ran her palms along her skirt, chasing creases down her lap. Though the weave of her new gown was much finer than that of anything else she'd worn as of late, her skin longed for the texture of Rishan silk – smooth as moonlight, soft as mist – a luxury remembered from the prosperous days of the house of Liang. She might have been able to afford it had she been willing to part with her mother's heirloom headdress. Instead, she'd bartered for this stiff, unyielding cloth with the last of her jade combs. At least the color was auspicious; the cloth made her think of pomegranates and perfectly matched the red coral beads hanging from her hairpins. The hairpins are for luck, Zilei told herself. She fervently hoped she would have no cause to poison anyone with them today.
I fight to forget. A left hook, and I forget their names. A quick jab and I forget my own. A duck, an elbow to my face, and a kick to the ribs, and I forget the reason they're gone. But no matter how long the fight lasts, I can never forget how much I miss them, nor can I forget that it's my fault they died. And then, a pipe hits my head, and I forget everything in favor of a deep darkness that swallows me whole.
They say the camera never lies. But it does. A camera can tell untruths as easily as her father. And at Parent’s Weekend, it told its most outrageous lie yet. Its digital pixels declared that Eve and Owen MacIntyre were a normal, functional family unit. It offered proof by capturing an affectionate father with graying temples and a new tuition bill and a Midwestern daughter with a penchant for Crayola-inspired hair dye in its slick exterior. It whispered of genuine affection, family dinner and smooth roads both behind and ahead. But it lied.
Just so you know, it weren’t my lame idea to go out for no football or nothing like that. I’d never a gone out for it if it was left all up to me. A guy don’t even really go out for no team nohow. Instead, what he does is put some poor bastard on the spot by asking him in front of everybody if he can cough up thirty bucks to have his name read over the loud speaker at half-time like some hotshot or something. And after a lamo hands over the thirty bucks he gets from the poor bastard he put on the spot, ain’t no coach gonna go and tell him to get lost since we barely get enough lamos to start with. Coach’s always biting his nails until all eighteen of us get weighed in. That’s like, the minimum you need for a game to count and Coach’s face’ll get all red before each game and everything since he don’t never know until weigh-ins if a lamo is gonna show up or not. So they’d like never cut you even if they wanted to. I’m pretty sure Coach would of cut me if he weren’t always worried the rest of the lamos wasn’t gonna show up each week. Coach’s always saying it ain’t worth his time and grief if a game don’t count so I’m pretty sure that’s why he’s kept me around. And if you ain’t caught on by now, Coach’s always biting a nail or getting all red in the face, or saying something or another. Mostly because he’s gotta deal with someone like me. I ain’t got no athletics in me to speak of and I don’t even like football none. Not even a little. Watching tv and eating Pop Tarts is my trade. But Josh, he wanted to play something bad and he’s my best friend and everything, so a guy’s gotta do a thing or two if his best friend wants him to, even if he don’t like it none. That’s the way it goes where I come from.
"Venture forth! Bravery in Adversity, Unity in Diversity.! Despite mumbling this rousing motto at assembly each morning for three Terran years, 79% of the teenage cadets graduate from the Cosmic Space Academy still believing that you shouldn't:
1. mess with the fabric of space
2. trust an alien
3. eat the local food (without extreme caution)
and above all, never, ever be a hero. Unless, of course, you want condolences, a space burial with all the trimmings and a berylium plated medal sent to your grieving loved ones.
On December 23rd, the plane crashed. Nose-dived. Bombed. Smacked into the middle of the Pacific. I survived. You survived. No one else did.
There I was on the first day of school – in a new school – and I was lost. I clutched the yellowed map of Fort Henry High School close to my chest to protect it from the swarm of sweaty bodies slowly inching down the hallway. I needed to move faster to make it to class before the bell rang, so I awkwardly sidestepped a group of little freshman laughing and giggling and blocking everyone behind them. I needed room 319 right now. There’s 316, 318, 320, Where’s 319? I slid over to a propped up window to get out of the flow of traffic and scanned the map again. It looked like I was right where I should be, so what’s up?
The boy wants to know if I’m okay. Am I okay? That depends. Is he here to kill me? If so, I’ve been better, thanks. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not scared of dying. We’re all going to die—probably me sooner than anyone if I don’t figure out a way out of here. I just can’t die yet. Not until I figure out a way to get to heaven. That’s all I want from the boy: for him to let me live long enough to save my soul.
Into the hole that was now her heart she put her work. Words didn’t just appear on paper. On her desk: the phone logs of the recurring harassment by government officials and the news footage of the press pack camped out on a cable crossed lawn, plugging into the county grid, violating the metal panelled integrity of local street lights, hacked open by some AT&T freelancer, so that the news trucks could fire up, live, for the seething mass of stand-ups, broadcast, world-wide, via satellite. She hadn’t kept Richard safe but it was his choice to die.
It's 1:00 in the morning and I'm sitting here staring at a pickle jar full of severed fingers. I think there's like eleven or twelve pinkies in there, I lost count.
My first thought when I learned that diet guru Sydney Toles was electrocuted by a defibrillator hooked up to his weigh-in scale was that I was cheated out of an interview. My guilt about the reaction was tempered by my impression of Toles. He was a nasty bastard who only wanted to use my column to push his new book. I write “Cooking with Betty,” a food feature in Compel magazine. I should explain that I write the column in spite of being culinarily challenged, which is a nice way of saying I can’t cook. As if that weren’t enough on my plate so to speak, I have to hide the fact that I’m Betty. To the rest of the world I’m Mark Adams.
Ryan pressed back against his headrest when he saw the counselor’s wild dance and the neon ribbons cascading from her glittery tiara. This girl was packed full of crazy, ready to unleash a deadly firestorm of perkiness. Ryan almost asked his mom to throw the car in reverse instead of stopping beside her. Clearing his criminal record might not be worth a week at summer camp with nut jobs like this.
As the door in the other room opens, all her thoughts disappear. Her breath speeds up. Her heart pounds in her head. The heavy footsteps approach closer, getting louder with every hesitant step. They came for her. A tear rolls down her face. She tries to search for something, to hide, but she can’t make herself move. The shadowed figure shows itself. A shriek escapes her cold lips. Eternal blackness.
Thor checked for the man’s pulse. “I think he’s dead,” he croaked.
“I can’t believe you got me to do this!” Don yelled.
“Shut up! What’s done is done. He’s dead, we did it. Come on, we gotta clean up this mess and get out of here!”
Who the heck are you? And what are you doing in my husband’s glove compartment? "Top size small, 36 D; Bottoms size 2; Ring size 5; Love, Megan. Pushing a strand of auburn hair out of her eyes, Laurel Tillman contemplated the scrap of paper in her hand. Just seconds ago, she’d bent over the passenger’s seat of her husband’s car and opened the glove compartment. Her reward had been an avalanche of papers and pamphlets tumbling out onto the gray carpet. The grand prize floated to the top, "Love, Megan."
from Destiny's Kiss
“Why do you do these things, Raven?”
“Because father, in the end nothing really matters.”
“Not even god?”
“I have long lost faith in god.”
“Then why are you here?”
Silence.
Old man Jimmy Conkling avoided eye contact with the modest boulder each time he emerged from the mouth of the glacial cave he called home. A bronze tablet stamped the rock and made a grand statement: “According to legend,” on that spot in 1626 Peter Minuit purchased Manhattan from the Lenape. The old man had no taste for history. He believed the rock was bad luck. Yet his roost had been quiet and safe for a decade. The rangers let him be, as he had no record and harmed nobody. The old man loved the cave. Better yet, the cave didn’t give a damn about him.
I findmyself in the dark graveyard just as the journal described. The graves are covered with thick twining ivy that curls and tangles like green tendrils of hair. The cold rain soaked my deep chestnut hair. My eyes whip back and forth across the scene as my heart thunders behind my ribs, skipping a beat at every creak of those creepy crows.
She'd been sleeping with Nathaniel for months when he told her but she wasn't surprised. "I'm engaged," he said. They were laying in bed, in her room, side by side. Her shoulder was slick from his sweat. The moonlight filtered through mostly closed blinds and created a silky glow on the hardwood floor. She didn't dare breathe.
She'd been sleeping with Nathaniel for several months when he told her but she wasn't surprised. "I'm engaged," he said. They were laying in bed, in her room, side by side. Her shoulder was still slick from his sweat. The moonlight filtered through mostly closed blinds and created a silky glow on the hardwood floor. She didn't dare breathe.
My first thought, at the sight of the pistol leveled at my head was, “I’m going to die a virgin.” Most people say that during a near-death experience, they see their life flash before their eyes. Not me. Then again, I hadn’t really done enough to see anything interesting. Instead I could only see the things that I would never get to do – go to college, travel the world, get past first base with Chelsea.
The mailman whistled to himself as he rounded the corner of Jefferson Road and turned onto River. He was throughly enjoying the slight breeze blowing in through the open door of his van, so it was only out of necessity that he stopped at the end of River Road. Stepping out of his van, he looked down at his freshly ironed shirt and wiped the remainder of his muffin off with a calloused hand. He had dropped coffee on his shirt also, and there was a dark stain over the name embroidered on it, obscuring the R and O in Robert and changing his name to simply -'bert'. Robert looked up and smiled to himself, his cheeks turning rosy from the wind. Although it perhaps wasn't the most desirable profession, Robert loved his job and he couldn't imagine doing anything different. The road he was currently staring down, River Road, was a long cul-de-sac, and he had long pondered what the most efficient method for delivering the mail was. When he was first assigned the route, he would park at one end, and carrying all the mail in his long satchel, he’d walk from house to house and deliver it. However this did require quite a bit of walking, and Robert wasn’t as young and sprightly as he used to be, and driving the breezy mail-van was one of his favorite things about the job. So, since he had grown older, he had started to drive to each mailbox and then get out of his van in order to do his beloved job. Today, however, was different.
Though the renowned late-night talk show After Hours enjoyed wild success for nearly a decade, ratings in the show’s first six weeks on air were dismal. Archived memos from ABS indicate that network producers fully intended to cancel the show until the original host, lauded soap opera actor and former philosophy professor Dustin Paulman, walked off the set during an interview with eight year old bassoon prodigy Andy Alvord. Contractually obligated to provide another six weeks of programming to ABS, After Hours producers replaced Paulman with the then-unknown actor Samuel Coulan, whose oeuvre at the time was limited to a handful of commercials for car dealerships and laundry detergents.
It was a beautiful summer night. The stars shone like diamonds against the onyx background. I took a deep breath and, like I thought it would, the fresh air helped clear the cobwebs from my head. I felt more invigorated than I had for days. My pace quickened, and I lost all track of time. It had been quite awhile since I felt so at ease. I didn’t have to worry about demons, dragons or evil sorcerers for the first time in months.
The school bell buzzed, Toby gasped and his face turned a sickly gray. Then his mom’s and dad’s annoying words began ringing in his head along with the buzzer: “Toby, it’s time to get back on that horse. Toby, it’s time to take the bull by the horns!” Ugh! He knew they were right, but still—and what was with all the animal references?!
******
Stopping my motorcycle halfway down the hill, I stared down at my new high school. Next to it was the elementary school that I'd gone to until I was run out of town at age twelve. The well worn merry-go-round and jungle gym were still intact, but the huge steel slide had been replaced with something safer. I smiled at the irony as I surveyed the baseball diamond that I'd spent so much time at all those years ago.
*****
What’d you expect when you start out life abandoned in a dumpster? A dumpster. Tossed there by my own dad during a blizzard one January night. Shit. I should be dead. And him? He doesn't deserve to live.
The neighbors of 713 Oakland didn’t know what to think when the castle appeared. Even with corporate deadlines, unzipped pants, and spilled coffee buzzing in their eight to five minds, the seventy foot shadow cast over their homes was difficult to miss. Cold gray stone frowned at their normal lives behind a ten foot iron fence. Queer gargoyles sneered above flying buttresses and a spiral tower watched over it all from a sinister height. The sudden appearance of the foreboding structure had them in a daze. Keys hung limp in ignitions as they gathered along the curb, whispering amongst themselves. Even the most outlandish conjectures, from helicopters bringing in parts during the night to government conspiracy could not explain its existence. But there was one thing all those on Oakland Avenue could agree upon. The castle on 713 was just as strange as the people that lived there.
New Year’s Resolution #1: Kill Malory! Not quickly either! The use of ketchup and a corn dog should be involved in her murder!
I bit down on my lip as the new resolution mixed with the fury churning in my stomach. Both grew like heartburn after a chili dog from the Santa Monica pier at closing time.
“Don’t worry about it, Cassie.” Malory’s voice played back in my mind, all distorted like she’d been drinking too much victory punch. “I’ve totally got your ride covered.”
If this was my ride—Justin, my ex-boyfriend’s black Suburban rolled to a stop in front of me, the sun glinting off the tinted passenger’s window— I think I’d rather spend New Year’s Eve alone.
In third grade I was punched so hard in the face that I thought I saw God. As far as I can remember, it was just that one fleeting glimpse. Does God exist? Well, I don’t really know. Can you believe in something you can’t see?
Lisa Bennett wore a perfect preppy smile on her perfect face as she walked down the hall to biology class. Her posse of nearly perfect girlfriends clustered tightly around her like protons, engaging her in small talk, ever mindful of their rank and how much it depended on being close to Lisa. Buzzing around the nucleus on the periphery were the electrons – boys, itching to get close. Not just preps and jocks, even geeks and stoners hovered nearby acting nonchalant, knowing they didn’t stand a chance, yet hoping. How could I simultaneously despise and admire Lisa Bennett so much?
Like a rising sun, Madeline smiled. This must be what it is like to be a parent. I never realised. I'm fifteen so why would I? She was definitely better than me. What reason does she have to smile? Where can she see any light in the darkness that is our world? But still she smiled. Madeline was only four when the sky fell. She was five when the lights went out for good. She was almost eight when our parents were killed. And yet she smiled. How?
Each morning, we wake in our beds and prepare for the magical miracle of a normal day. Dad goes one way, mom goes another. The big kids take the bus to school, to their different classrooms and different friends and different schedules, and the little guy is off to daycare. The day works its magic, putting each of us through our tests and games and challenges and laughter and at some point we all take a moment to stop and think a bit about the others who we’re not with and our hearts crack, a little bit of loneliness exposed. But we trust the miracle of normal and go on with our day. We go away, each of us, in different directions and then we come home, each of us, every night – an established routine. Like a five-string yo-yo that takes ten hours to work, the magical miracle of a normal day is that we each find our way back home and that little crack of loneliness gets patched right up. And then came last Tuesday.
Acutely aware of every ray of sunlight, the pale faced form of a man walked regally in the daytime shadows, hidden by the oppressive yet beautiful light that came with every day’s beginning. This new era was so liberating in cities where buildings grew so high that no sunlight ever touched the ground for longer than a few brief hours during any given day. The amusement that lit his cold blue eyes did not soften his facial features, which had grown hard and sharp with each passing century. How glorious his life would have been with her in it. Why had she had to refuse him?
Lulu waxed the top of her board just like she was told to do at the store. She held the square of white Zap wax in her left hand and rubbed it generously over the skimboard. “Momma,” she said, “why am I waxing the top and not the bottom of the board?”
“So your feet will stick, darlin’ and you won’t fall off the board,” I replied. Then I corrected myself, “Well, it will make it easier for you to stay on the board, not slip off.”
Of course she did slip. And fall. She ran down to the shoreline, holding the skimboard by her side, and then flipped it into the shallow salty water. Waves rushed in, engulfing the board, raising the water level, as she hopped with her two wide feet, slightly bent little toes, hammertoes—an ancestral anomaly, poor girl—onto the waxy board, arms flailing out and then swinging behind her derriere as she tumbled to the cold, murky floor.
Certain existences can be blocked out from the conscious mind. Noises, such as the shrill screams of the live-in prostitute next door, could be guarded against with practice, or ear plugs. Scents, like arid tobacco smoke and three day old Chinese food, a bother only for the uninitiated. Sights, like a blinking alarm clock reading 4:57 a.m., too were swallowed by the dark depths of detachment. Even gross immoralities, such as political scandals and religious brainwashing, could be ignored with impolite ignorance. Some things, however, are impossible to turn a blind eye to. Because, it is in that ignorance where untruths take root and remarkably shitty art is born.
Tenny sat up fast and her cheek, stuck to her Mythology textbook, stung as it pulled away.
“Ow.”
One hand came to her cheek and the other pressed against the tiny rip she had just made at the bottom of the page. She ran a finger over the tear as if she could magically fix it if she rubbed it enough times. She felt the Frankenstein-like groove on her cheek and sighed. That mark would probably last all day, and today wasn’t the day to be sporting a sleep crease.
I shiver as the clock on the clock tower strikes midnight. A man hangs by a thick string under the clock. The man is dead. The string is tied around his neck. The limp body sways with the wind. Side to side. Left to right. Perfect, just as I planned. I turn around, leaving the screeches and sirens behind. This mission is complete. Now follows the next.
Five days after her mother’s death, Alida took her first man.
She hiked up her skirt, flung her leg across his lanky frame and squatted, suspending herself just above his loins. In one motion, she tore open his shirt, sending several small buttons scuttling across the feet of the crowd huddled around them. Then, she relaxed her body downward and put her weight on her hands and legs. Her thighs flanked his lithe body and tiny bits of gravel dug into her knees. The villagers edged closer, drawn out of curiosity to the scene of the older woman with auburn locks atop the young man. They pushed and shoved, rubber-necking, in order to get the best view. Glancing up at them, their brightly colored clothing seemed to create a kaleidoscopic pattern with blues, greens, and reds dancing in a vertiginous matrix. She smelled the crowd’s excitement as well as their confusion. “Move back,” she said in French, “Give me room.” She waved her arm as though directing an orchestra. The crowd moved backwards, giving way. Murmurs rippled the crowd. She felt for a pulse on the boy’s neck and placed her palm across his chest in search of his heartbeat. Nothing. It was time to start CPR.
My eyes widen as I read the email one more time.
Nathan, you are going to die today.
Through my whole life as an agent, I have never got a threat like this. The phone rings. I pick it up.
“Hello?”
“Nathan, ” the voice whispers.
“Who is this?”
“It’s me, Nathan.”
“Who are you?”
The door creaks open. I drop the receiver. They have come. I get up from my chair and slowly head to the door.
“Hello?”
No answer. I open the door, letting the cold winter air drift into my home.
“Who’s there?”
I close the door and take a deep breath.
“Nathan?” Warmth runs through my body as I realize its Alison.
The congressman’s daughter lives in a large white house. It sits atop a hill like a candle on a birthday cake. To the left of the house just off the living room there is a small courtyard surrounded on three sides by a stonewall. One of the walls is built right into the hill. There is a small opening in that wall and inside it, a crawlspace just large enough for a little girl to tuck in with a blanket and read. It may have been used once upon a time to store food, her father thinks, or as a tornado shelter. From her hole in the wall, she has a mouse’s eye view of the glass doors, which lead in to the living room. Often the glass doors are open. That is the case tonight. Tonight many people are in the house and many in the trees. The ones in the trees look like buzzards in their black suits. They murmur into tiny tin cups on their jackets.
Sam Lange positioned his naked body across the top of a wire dog cage, his head tilted slightly back on the edge. The borders between his skin and the world began to blur, bleeding a steady stream of delirium into the sunlight, and from faraway, he heard a horse galloping toward him, and then the Lone Ranger approached. The friendly masked face, turning to shadow as the sun’s brilliance dimmed. Robin Martin
I stare in the mirror. There is a beautiful smile and shining back at me is a white dress. I try to walk, but I keep staring in the mirror. I cannot scream or cry. Everyone is waiting. I hear the music, the laughter, but all I see is white. I cannot move, inside I am dying. I cannot walk away from myself.
Dean Martin was born somewhere just like the rest of us. A whisper of the boy from Steubenville, Ohio buried inside the voice of Dino, same way Frank Stevens got under my skin and spread like a bruise.
If you recognise these names then we are having a kind of synchronicity; if you didn’t know them, you know them now so we’ve made the connections. That is not dissimilar to what happened to Frank and me, he made all the connections but by the time I shook him off, he had soldered our wires together without earthing the device.
To make up your own mind about what happened to me and Frank, you have to read the short story I wrote. It’s already published but I’ve prepared a summary to save you time and move this on because I’m operating in a different sphere now, spinning in another vicious circle. I’ve developed a cream that seals the palms of your hands and forms an impenetrable film, concealing sweat until you are in a more favourable situation, perhaps a bathroom or your vehicle. The only noticeable features are a little shininess off your skin and a thin line around your wrists where the cream ends. That can easily be concealed with a long sleeved shirt. Trust me, this is something you may only need once but when you do, it’s indispensable. Who knows if it works out right what this cream might be able to do? To close up the skin pores is one thing but what about the porous membrane separating fact from fiction?
Lightning struck our house the moment Mother died. My bedroom flashed searing white and Father’s wordless cry echoed above the thunder and the rattling glass, announcing the inevitable. She had cheated fate once already, nearly fourteen years ago. Twice was just wishful thinking. The storm didn’t kill her. Father did, in a way.
Do you believe in fate?
When my great-aunt Eugenia’s ashes showed up on our porch, I thought for sure Mama would let loose with one of the words she’d been trying hard not to use anymore. Instead, Mama took a quick look inside the metal box, as if that was all she needed to identify her mother’s sister, before fitting the lid back on and handing it to me.
Later, after the enormity of what happened loomed, ready to lop his head off, Eddie inwardly blamed short-sightedness and outwardly insisted they forced him to act. How could they not expect retaliation for raiding? Shooting them was what anyone would do, right? Once the self-pity cycle was done, they asked what he would do differently and he’d list all the ideas that occurred to him in the days since, ideas, he admitted during the many days he lay awake exhausted and miserable, probably wouldn’t have changed a damn thing. But maybe they’d all be saved. Just…maybe.