My friend Shelli was living with her cat-allergic mother and needed someone to take care of her cat until she was once again in her own place. I was more than willing, in fact I campaigned for the honor. I’d met Hippo years before and fell in love with her Read more…
My father got custody of my twin sister and me when we were twelve, in sixth grade at Perry Middle School in Perry, Ohio. He had to snatch us quickly, in the middle of the day, one of us at school, the other being kept home, while Mom wasn’t around Read more…
I was in second grade, I’m pretty sure, but maybe first. That age where, every week, we had to fold a piece of paper in half, lengthwise, and number ten lines for our spelling test. The teacher would pace sedately down the aisles between desks, watching us bent dutifully with Read more…
This is a memoir piece I wrote for Argot Magazine, which has since been taken down. I’m a nerdy freshman at Case Western Reserve University, hoping to major in Science Fiction and Some Type of Science (I hadn’t picked one yet) when I’m walking back from class. I see a Read more…
There is a trope in movies were a gorgeous actress wears glasses and baggy clothes in the first act, then someone gives her fashionable clothes, contact lenses, and does her hair, and she spends the rest of the movie acknowledged as pretty. They call this “The Pretty Ugly Girl” and Read more…
After all my anxiety about Covid at WorldCon, I came home healthy and tested negative. Probability, as always, is a jerk and delights in rewarding risk and punishing caution. While I was away, my husband, who has been very careful and staying home, decided to take the car in for Read more…
My father recently gave me a box of my old school books, and it had a pair of spiral notebooks in it, and one of them is replete with awful teen poetry!! Since I’m about to be on staff for a teen writing workshop next week, I thought I should Read more…