UPDATE: TIME’S UP! COMMENTS CLOSED!
It’s the grandaddy of them all. The big kahuna. The 32 oz porterhouse with a side of awesome.
It’s our FIFTH Sort-of-Annual um don’t point out that the last one was two years ago oops too late Stupendously First Paragraph Challenge!!!
Do you have the best paragraph of them all? Will you make Charles Dickens wish he ditched “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” for your paragraph when he wrote A Tale of Two Cities?
Let’s see.
First and most importantly: ALL THE PRIZES.
The ultimate grand prize winner of the SUFPC will win:
1) The opportunity to have a partial manuscript considered by my wildly awesome agent Catherine Drayton of InkWell. Who does Catherine represent, you might ask? Why, only authors such as Markus Zusak (The Book Thief), John Flanagan (The Ranger’s Apprentice series), Becca Fitzpatrick (Hush Hush), and many more amazing writers. This is a rather excellent prize. You don’t even have to write a query letter!
2) All the finalists will win a query critique from me trust me I’ve still got my query-revising skillz. Said critique is redeemable at any time.
3) All the finalists in the USA (sorry non-USAers, international postage is bananas) will win a signed copy of my new novel, last in the Jacob Wonderbar trilogy, in stores and available online on Thursday, Jacob Wonderbar and the Interstellar Time Warp!! Please check this bad boy out I swear you’ll love it and you won’t even get eaten by a dinosaur:
The Jacob Wonderbar trilogy:
Jacob Wonderbar and the Cosmic Space Kapow
Jacob Wonderbar for President of the Universe
Jacob Wonderbar and the Interstellar Time Warp
4) All finalists and winners win the pride of knowing that you are in some truly fantastic company. Let’s review the now-published authors who were finalists in writing contests on this blog before they became famous and fancy published authors:
Stuart Neville! Victoria Schwab! Terry DeHart! Michelle Hodkin! Michelle Davidson Argyle! Joshua McCune! Natalie Whipple! Josin L. McQuein! Jeanne Ryan! Peter Cooper! Travis Erwin!
Are we missing anyone? I sometimes forget THERE ARE SO MANY.
There may also be honorable mentions. You may win the lottery during the time you are entering this contest. Who can say really?
So! Here’s how this works. Please read these rules very carefully:
a) This is a for-fun contest. Rules may be adjusted without notice, as I see fit, but this one will always be here: Please don’t take this contest overly seriously. This is for fun. Yes, the grand prize is awesome and I would have willingly picked a fight with Mike Tyson to have had my manuscript considered by Catherine Drayton without ever having to write a query, but please don’t let that detract from the fact that this contest is for-fun.
b) Please post the first paragraph of any work-in-progress in the comments section of THIS POST. If you are reading this post via e-mail you must click through to enter. Please do not e-mail me your submission it will not count.
c) The deadline for entry is this THURSDAY 7pm Eastern time, at which point entries will be closed. Finalists will be announced… sometime between Friday and the year 2078. When the finalists are announced this suddenly becomes a democracy and you get to vote on the stupendously ultimate winner.
d) Please please check and double-check your entry before posting. If you spot an error in your post after entering: please do not re-post your entry. I go through the entries sequentially and the repeated deja vu repeated deja vu of reading the same entry over and over again makes my head spin. I’m not worried about typos. You shouldn’t be either.
e) You may enter once, once you may enter, and enter once you may. If you post anonymously please be sure and leave your name (no cheating on this one).
f) Spreading the word about the contest is very much encouraged. The more the merrier, and the greater your pride when you crush them all.
g) I will be the sole judge of the finalists. You the people will be the sole judge of the ultimate winner.
h) There is no word count limit on the paragraphs. However, a paragraph that is overly long or feels like more than a paragraph may lose points. It should be a paragraph, not multiple paragraphs masquerading as one paragraph. Use your own discretion.
i) You must be at least 14 years old and less than 178 years old to enter. No exceptions.
j) I’m on the Twitter! And the Facebook! And the Google+! And the Instagram! It is there I will be posting contest updates. Okay maybe not Instagram but pretty pictures!
That is all.
GOOD LUCK. May the best paragraph win and let us all have a grand old time.
Keirra Smith
c/o sfrench@jefcoed.com
As she walked into the classroom, I began to feel like we were the only two there. Then, I snapped out when the teacher announced, "This is our new student, Aaliyah Matthew." The new girl then walked to the desk next to me. When she sat down, I looked at her and thought to myself, "This is a new start; I have to get her."
Kali kept her back to the small congregation gathered behind her. She could picture them standing there, seething and salivating as if they hadn’t already had their kill, as if it weren’t the reason they were here. Kali held enough images in her mind; there was no need to add another to the roiling mess. She let the unlit torch dangle at her side. The sun hung low, slicing daggers through the woodland that stretched out behind the stone slab before her. Kali stared into the orb and counted the bird calls sounding beyond the canopy. Soon the sun would drop away and it would be time.
The music starts. Was the air in here always this stifling? Maybe it’s this stupid, constricting maroon robe I’m wearing. I didn’t think this many people could fit into our gym. Breathe…Breathe… This is it, freedom. Graham, where is he? I look through the crowd. He said he would be sitting with my family, but I can’t even find my mom and dad.
“Our turn.” June Kabat tugged on my sleeve pulling me down the aisle behind her.
An elderly lady with a gentle smile appears and squeezes June Kabat’s shoulder as we pass. “I’m so proud of my Juney.” She says.
June looks over her shoulder sensing something, but has no idea what. She can’t see all of the deceased that have shown up to celebrate our class’s graduation. As if this place wasn’t crowded enough. I’m stuck having to sort through a sea of faces, dead and alive, as I try to find my family.
Tameria Howard
c/o sfrench@jefcoed.com
What's the purpose of school? I know education is important, but don't you want to have fun? Classrooms aren't fun. What if we attended the zoo for school? Elephants and monkeys would be our teachers. Tigers and giraffes would be out janitors. Hippos could be our lunch ladies. Interesting, right? Would you go to the principal's office if he was a pretty flamingo or maybe a bouncy kangaroo?
Ascending the dusty San Fernando mountains that had welcomed my feet for so many years, I was grateful to have my clamoring mind silenced by the rapid beating of my heart. Just as a nagging thought pried its way into my head, there was a gift from the divine as nature created a mental diversion; as I looked upward into the early evening skies a majestic site corralled the sadness for a few more moments. It seemed that they were within arm's reach; hundreds of predator birds gliding amongst one another; waltzing, darting, and seeming to be engaged in some sort of mystical seduction with one another. There were no batting of wings as the strong mountain breezes kept them afloat. They were gone within a matter of seconds. My sneakered feet stopped. How do I handle the news that Cinder, my cat of 19 glorious years, was hours ago diagnosed with kidney failure? A lizard darted across the path with lightening speed to only watch me with its keen eyes from a safe craggy perch. Recalling how Cinder shimmied trees with youthful agility that had long passed, I continued the ascent, with a purpose to show the world that Cinder's unique DNA would yet again redefine logic.
Little one, listen to your mother's words:
There is a child, there is a ship and there is a sea.
The child is crooked, the ship his grace, the sea round the isle o' a holy city.
The child must ride the ship to the sea,
So that Crooked Cricket may one day be.
(opening paragraph of Boy with the Crooked/Cricket Legs)
She hears him in the hot Adriatic night before she sees him. "I’m an accountant," he murmurs from the other end of the speedboat. Amanda slides her hands outward in search of a weapon, the deck’s fiberglass hard against her back, but she comes up empty. He moves closer until he is standing above her; he’s smaller than the rest, weaker. His cheeks are wet with tears. The way he carries the gun like an apology makes her wonder how he has survived on the yacht. A ticking sound — the motor cooling – and she realizes her sympathy is a mistake. He has driven miles to bring her to the middle of the sea.
On a day of tedious rain in the fall of 1872, the American painter John Frederick Kensett sat in his studio overlooking Washington Square Park and scribbled a letter to his friend, James Northcutt, the illustrious pamphleteer. He wrote about his Italian gardener, whose son had recently died, or “moved into the windowless palace,” to quote the letter. In fact the boy had fallen into a vat of boiling peppermint at the Brooklyn soap factory where he worked. Two days later the child’s disconsolate mother killed herself by swallowing laudanum stolen from the drawer of her landlady’s Shaker table. When news of this latest calamity reached the unfortunate father and widower, he “put a period to his own life” by slashing his throat with a clasp knife.
Kyara Kitt
c/o sfrench@jefcoed.com
Why, why do I have to be in this position? How did all of this happen? The only think I remember is the party. Ugh, now my head is bleeding with my steaming blood. Why does he have me here, the one place where everything comes back? All my memories of my life just float back to me. He knows how I feel about this place, so why is he doing this? I look around, but there's nothing but a lamp. I finally see my cousin frozen in his steps with a death stare and a knife.
Cedric Lowe
c/o sfrench@jefcoed.com
As the immense red moon took its place among the grim stygian sky, the stars aligned to bring upon us the end of days. The dejected winds whispered a sorrowful cry. Total darkness engulfed the world. A sudden haunting silence petrified even the souls of the deceased. Time itself ironically stops.
"Sorry, Kipp, can't help," said Egon Hisfuss, loosening his tie with a curled yellow talon. "Last Solid went to Moreton the Make-Believe Martian at 8.15 this morning."
The first customers of the day are never the regulars. Morning people are not the hallmark of this neighborhood. No, the ones who initially ring the bell have read the signs to know when the zoo opens and want to see the exhibits right away so they can leave again. The two who walked in barely glanced around at the chairs, tables and display cases I had spent many long hours arranging into the optimum combination of efficiency and aesthetics. These were not quiet observers, camera in hand. These were rattle-the-cage, tap-the-glass, taunt-the-animals visitors.
Ryan’s music is too loud—not exactly a problem, except that it’s louder than mine. I jack up my iPod. My tiny speakers can’t drown out the noise. Especially since they aren’t just competing with music, but laughter, splashing, screams. Fun. That’s what’s on the other side of the fence.
On either side of the rocky promontory the beach stretched for one or two hundred yards before folding into coves. A sharp wind whipped the waves into whitecaps, which swelled together into a hungry surf that spilled far onto the shore. Above the dunes the rising sun, hidden behind a thick pall of clouds, produced an orange-gray glow in the sky. It was a cold day in the late autumn. At the highest point on the promontory there was a two-story house, neither large nor small. A gravel road led down the steep slope from the house to the dunes, where it curved out of sight. In the room upstairs a light was on. A woman stood with a cup of hot tea in one hand and an old photograph in the other. She could hear, but hardly noticed, the wind outside and, shortly, the steady tattoo of rain on the windows. She was occupied with the man staring back at her, the man in the faded black-and-white picture, the man she had been hired to find.
-Hunter Sharpless
At first the boat’s emptiness did not disturb William. It floated over deep water, rocking gently as the waves slapped its sides. An anchor line pulled taut over its bow and angled away below, a dark shadow through the clear blue. There was no one in sight. The boat seemed to have been left there as part of the scenery. Its hypnotic rocking was soothing. Nothing was required of William except to see it and appreciate it. Then he began to think that there should be a person, that the boat belonged to someone and had not got there on its own. He scanned the water in both directions along the rocky, ancient coral bluffs that formed the coastline here, looking for a snorkeler. There were no signs of anyone. The boat’s aluminum sides glinted, flashing in his eyes. He began to worry. Was someone in trouble? Would he have to do something about it?
The universe has an odd way of conducting its business. If Person A were to drop an egg and break it, Person B might sternly dispense a rebuke or, perhaps, laugh, while the universe, seeing the same broken egg, would note that this egg was crucial to the current of human affairs. “That egg,” the universe would say, “was to be splattered all over Person C's glass pane window, which meant that Person C would have to go and purchase a hose so that he could clean his house, and on the drive to the store Person C was to inadvertently run over and kill Person D. Now, regarding Person D,” etc., etc. It's possible, of course, that the universe would be joking with you – morbidly, I'll allow – and that the egg was entirely irrelevant, but the rules of time travel – not that time travel is the issue here, but a corollary – are pretty sound on the (erroneously) so-called “butterfly effect.”
I watch my reflection in the empty glass bottle and the truth hits me like a fist in the face: I’ve become a fucking cliché. Lying here in freshly stained sheets, I wait for his return, skin gleaming with sweat and regret. His post-coital pillow talk rings in my ear: It’s always the religious ones. I smile a mirthless smile. The Jack Daniels, the meth, the uncircumcised penis – it’s all so fucking predictable. Is it even rebellious anymore? Isn’t this just what middle-class Muslim kids did on weekends?
There’s a reason we tell stories. But I’m not sure if I have the courage to tell you mine. I want you to know right now – this is where the story ends. This prison cell is where you and I will both be, together, on the last page. I do not have the heart to keep it from you. I do not want you to think this tale ends well. There is no pretty ending. There is no riding off into the sunset for me. I will not live past tomorrow, and I’m looking for a way to make peace with that. It’s still in my hands, the thing that holds all the questions and all the answers. The universe in a few handfuls of parchment paper. I bring my fingers to the cover, curl them around the edge.
Slowly, painfully, breathlessly, I open it.
Rice is still falling from their hair as they ride down the packed dirt road in the buggy decorated with ribbons and flowers with old shoes bouncing up and down behind them. The paint splatters and drips mingling with the painted words on the brown store paper declaring this young couple “JUST MARRIED”.
Rawnie leaned her head back against the classroom wall and closed her eyes. Man, this school is even cold in the summer. Of course, it’s the Ice Queen’s room. The nastiest teacher with the crappiest classes. She squeezed her lips at the brass door handle. Just oone – mooore – signature and she was off to Juilliard. She smiled. Off to sing. Off to finally fulfill her childhood dream. Off to New York, to lights, to glitter, to fame, to fortune! She sighed – away from here. Just five short steps to the door that will take her away. A quick turn of the handle. She wouldn’t even have to look at her frosty stare. Flicking the paper in her face, here is my form – please sign it Ms. Queen. How easy is that! She looked at the door and wondered why her feet would not obey her brain, and why her stomach whirled on a rollercoaster. She noticed an icicle in the corner of the door’s small window and hesitated, cocking her head. She recognized the laughs of Tim’s little nerd-posse just around the corner. Oh my God, which was worse: Ice Queen or moronic puppy eyes with an audience? She seized the handle and twisted.
My sister’s voice is better than any old rooster for waking me in the morn. I squeeze my eyes against the day as her words jumble in my sleepy head, but Dad’s tone cuts in like a skinning knife. “Now, girl, if I want your brother to know, I’ll tell him.”
Remember the Alamo, remember the Maine, remember me. Those words–a kind of memory stone–rolled through Thad Cardwell’s mind as he turned the blade of his art knife against a whetstone. It wasn’t his art knife, exactly. He had put it in his pocket during class and just managed not to remember to leave it at the end of the hour–borrowed it one might say. Besides, it was sharper than anything he had and sharper still now, as sharp as a scalpel. He drew the knife through a sheet of paper, cleaving the page in two. Neat.
The benefits of looking good were undeniable and immeasurable. Otherwise places such as this would not exist. You worked hard so you could play hard, briefly relaxed and took pride in a job well done, and then got back to the grind. Once you stopped hustling it was the first step towards dying. James had no intention of heading down that path any time soon. He was a driven man who understood that looking good effortlessly was a state of being that lasted for just a blip. After one’s third decade their options were either succumbing to the laziness that aging brought about, or else fighting it off for as long as possible. The exertion required to go beyond beauty’s prescribed expiration date was not for everyone, just those it felt best to be around.
A really robust mammalian diving reflex was the least of Ken's impressively unseeable skills and considering he was neither a mammal, by strict definitions, or in possession of a heart-lung apparatus, he could still go into bradycardia with the best of them. Fast rope skipping, multiple dial turning and modal dialoguing were his best viewable talents and those that kept him gainfully employed. He had others and they were best known to Marsha, Ken's wife and soulmate, who liked to list them endlessly while water-proofing her vestigial gill sac. Unfortunately for her, and Ken, she was late coming home from Charles De Gaulle airport and it was raining hard.
My mother came to me as I was foundering in the exhaust. She manifested herself on a wall gouged with the three vertical scratches made by a claw, the same markings I’d seen on the pages of the codebook I’d been carrying in my pannier all the way from Germany to the Somme. I could just make out an open wound on one side of her muzzle, and I could see into her body, past innards and bones, all the way to the nicks and scrapes that seemed chiseled into the wall like the codes I’d seen in the book. I was lightheaded, on the verge of heaving up my last meal and senselessly lost in the haze of the moment, when the pages came into focus – turning – the ciphers folding around her, the sounds of paper crinkling as she parted the covers and stepped into the chamber on her hind legs, trailing a robe of letters and numbers in her wake. She lurched like a stick-figured human across the floor, past the old yellow lab lying inert below her, halting a dog-length away from where I was standing knee-deep in the dead and about to go down. I took a step back, feeling the onset of a chill, the kind of chill I must have felt when she took off and abandoned me so long ago. She’d come too late to save me and too late for me to say I was sorry – all I wanted to do was turn tail and run. Now, I can tell you from experience, oh can I ever, that four legs are faster than two, and during my time in the trenches I could outrun soldiers and even the tanks. But here in the backend of nowhere, I couldn’t outrun my mother.
Dang. I was late again. I slowly opened the door to the cafeteria where my classmates were already halfway through lunch. The sea of sameness never failed to amaze me. 250 eerily similar girls were quietly eating their lunch. No one talked. No one laughed. All of the girls had the same color hair. A color not seen anywhere else. The only way to describe it would be to say it was the color of ashes. And their eyes. Every girl had the same eyes. Hauntingly-empty gray eyes.
I just wanted to eat my spaghetti and meatballs without the news crackling in the background for one night. So I unplugged the kitchen TV before Mom came home and hid the cord behind it. Maybe she would try to turn it on, and think the old black-and-white set finally broke. Then I wouldn't have to hear all the bad reports from New York, like how a murderer named Son of Sam was terrorizing the city, or how another skyscraper was evacuated for a bomb scare. And I was so aware of the heat wave that I didn't need the weatherman to confirm it. But Mom noticed the cord right away. After a plug and a click, she slid the aluminum foil down the antenna to the magic spot that somehow made the images less blurry. I chomped my garlic bread, trying to tune out all the horrible-boring-horrible stuff. Until the last story came on. Then I listened. "This morning a parishioner found a newborn baby, left in a basket on the steps of St. Patrick's Cathedral."
The War was over. Daddy survived four years of sea battles, kamikaze attacks and hungry sharks that snuffed out the lives of fellow sailors and Marines on aircraft carriers in the Pacific. When he came home to Louisville, he married Mother faster than you can say Tie A Yellow Ribbon Around the Old Oak Tree. But the celebration ended abruptly on a steamy day in July, in the summer of 1946. That’s when they found my grandmother’s lifeless body wrapped around my mother, still breathing and pregnant. The two of them landed on a grassy lawn, about 20 yards from the wrecked 1941 Ford convertible. My other grandmother lay unconscious, face up on the hot asphalt pavement, in her Sunday best church dress. She would remain in a coma for six weeks. The men fared somewhat better. My dad’s ripped ear was sewn back on, and my grandfather escaped without injury. Mother’s two sisters sat on the front porch steps when the taxi delivered my grandfather. Dazed, he stumbled toward them, three purses clutched in his hands. The aftershocks of the day would shape the course of all their lives, but none more than two lives still unborn, my sister’s and mine.
Claire leaned her head against the cool glass of the window, watching street lights flash by through the strands of blue in her eyes. Soon they were in darkness again. A sea of strangers adrift in the night, bound together by the confines of a creaky bus. The interior was dark, save for a few dim reading lights here and there. The driver’s controls lit his face, making him look like angel atop a tree lit by holiday lights. His silver hair read as a halo in the distance. A certain subtle camaraderie had developed over the last few hours. Folks were banded together as long distance passengers on a second-class bus bound for somewhere far away. This was no express Greyhound flitting between major cities. Instead, this reconditioned bus traveled the back roads and served the rural communities close to the interstate. A slow way to savor the American countryside. Unless you are being hunted.
What moron invented family holidays? Like everyday life wasn’t already hard enough?
Claire shuddered. Even though the temperature ran close to ninety-six degrees down here, her body seemed to think she was in the middle of a frozen tundra. After spending so many days trapped in this pit, Claire had no idea if she was trembling from fear, sickness, or both.
Russ Lockhart said…
Serenity graced the faces of the three 10-year old boys lying at the foot of the Pontiff's bed. The boys’ eyes, closed now, had sparkled with dreamy visions at the gold coins hidden in their clenched palms. Their blood was drained to provide an infusion of youthful vitality in a desperate effort to save him. In fact, the unheard of procedure had reanimated Innocent's spirits. He was sitting up in bed for the first time in days. Upraised knees supported a large book consuming his attention. He looked up at the assembled power of the church gathered about him. Images of preying birds flitted across his vision as if announcing the power hungry prelates were ready to feast on his demise—even as they mumbled their hypocritical prayers. He’d had enough. His feeble voice and flicking gesture dismissed them all except his beloved Adolpho, the only man within these walls Innocent could trust without question.
Ever since that whole Twilight craze every girl thinks vampires are sexy and somehow better than normal guys. But the truth is they're just like every other male who is worth more than a quick glance. When they see a pretty girl, they're interested in the same thing as any guy. You already know what that is. If you don't you, you should probably shut this book now because things are going to get rough, pun-intended.
My new partner, Wayne Stevenson, is one of those sunflower seed guys. The squad car has
tiny specs of saliva-caked shell pieces stuck to both sides of the passenger door. If I cared that
much, I'd probably complain. But this is Gilmer, Alabama. A small town of, what, ten thousand?
Being prissy about sunflower seeds will get you named a liberal, smartypants city boy. Then again,
they call me that constantly, and they're not wrong. So I'm not sure what the hell I'm worried about.
Kona stood in the stillness of dawn, drinking deep mouthfuls of wind. Her eyes scanned the ground, stopping to focus on a pattern of shattered frost where a footprint had left its mark. Her gaze followed the backtrail of the footprint to the steps of a rough wooden cabin next to the one she had just exited. “Damn,” Kona uttered the word softly. “Bird’s already flown. She’s seventy years old and I still can’t keep up with her.” She licked her forefinger and drew a tally mark in the air. “Bird, one. Kona, zero.”
Rounding to the nearest simple number would count three and a half thousand hairs of metal thread so fine that you would not see one on its own, only if it were wound with its fellows, or in the case of these three and a half thousand, about to be brought to light by the man who has assembled them in this little room, with such grand and terrified expectation that he had become rooted with absolute stillness in his chair before it all.
“A curse? My father wasn’t cursed.” Bizarre words. Mine. Had I’d said them somewhere? Since they’d popped into my head this afternoon, I couldn’t keep the stupid things from swirling around my brain like dry leaves in a dust-devil. Better if the unrelenting thought-gusts would blow everything from the last two weeks—the last month—away. Doing this errand with Janine had to help. It was normal.
Ever since that whole Twilight craze every girl thinks vampires are sexy and somehow better than normal guys. But the truth is they're just like every other male who is worth more than a quick glance. When they see a pretty girl, they're interested in the same thing as any guy. You already know what that is. If you don't you, you should probably shut this book now because things are going to get rough, pun-intended.
The ancient trunk, with peeling leather and stains, does not look like it holds a treasure, but according to Agnes it does. She points her gnarled finger, the knuckle twice the size it was for most of her life, toward the trunk, flicks her hand twice as if that will hurry me up, and glares. I set the last knick-knack onto her bed and lift the lid.
When my daughter has her first real heartbreak, I will tell her my story. Not for the "I crave the way he wrapped me in his arms" heartbreak that you get one week in, but the kind where months have gone by and you still find yourself longing for the way the lines of his palm fit so closely with yours. I will tell her, "Baby, while I love your father in a powerful sort of way (like champagne popping, the cork knock knocking around my insides), there was once a time when I loved a poet, a man who insisted on searching for the edge of infinity in my eyes. And before that I loved a man who held me on a railroad in Venice, a someone so restless he couldn’t pick between the different futures each woman offered him. And further still in my past there was someone I would kiss for hours and hours, so much so that kissing anyone else still feels strange. I fell hard and I fell again, and that is the way of things.”
Morgan Vale is my home, cradled by the soft curves of the Appalachian Mountains. Claims to fame include: (1) least populated town in the state, (2) smallest public school in America, from which I will graduate at the top of my class (of five) this year, and the Sugar Maple Festival, during which legions of people stream into our pristine valley, driving every ATV and pickup truck in a five-county radius. Fortunately, they also bring a ravenous appetite for pancakes and fresh maple syrup. It was the Saturday of Sugar Maple weekend when I met her. The sea of carnie food and camouflage apparel parted as she approached my “Pick up the Ducks” booth. She was dark and exotic with chiseled angles from cheekbones to triceps to pointy-toed boots. She studied the crowded mass of identical plastic ducks, then stretched to pluck one from the far side of the pool. She rolled it over on her fingertips to reveal a silver star – the grand prize duck. How did you do that? She read the question in my eyes. “I’m a recruiter,” she said and tossed the duck back in without breaking eye contact. The crowded ducks tapped against the sides of the tin pool, and the murky water sloshed over the edge. “I trust I’ve chosen well.” She smiled serenely, and I was pretty certain that we weren’t talking about ducks anymore.
Zach died nine months ago. And ever since then I’ve had people ringing my doorbell. You would think, in this day and age, that you’d get a text first, maybe a call even. Nobody should just ring the goddamn bell. And you know what, maybe they did call, but I probably didn’t hear it ring, or forgot to listen to the voicemail, because I’m not as vigilant about these things as the world expects you to be these days. So here, ringing the doorbell is one of the Casserole Ladies. The ladies heard what happened, and they felt terrible, such a tragedy. And naturally, those who suffer a tragedy need to be fed. And so, the kids and I are approaching month nine of casserole deliveries. Mercifully, the deliveries have now slowed to a trickle, an ooze of sour cream and cheese, but still, they come.