By the time I walked onto that rooftop in Queens, the sky over New York was the color of burnt orange, the kind…
By the time Joel’s back hit the mat, the gym was already chanting for his enemies. “Ve-nom! Ve-nom! Ve-nom!” The bleachers of Jefferson…
The moment everything cracked open was the moment the waiter froze—crystal water pitcher suspended mid-air—his eyes flicking from my trembling mother to my…
The first thing Miles noticed was the shine of the medal. It caught the light every time the man shifted—an almost theatrical glint…
The moment I realized I’d been quietly erased from my own career, I was standing under the frozen glare of fluorescent lights in…
The first time my sister tried to ruin my life, she lit another girl’s bag on fire behind the gym of our suburban…
The metal tray of cupcakes tilted in Jenny’s hands, and for a split second it felt like time slowed down. Frosting swayed in…
The knife trembled in his hand, but not because he was nervous. The blade scraped across the steak, slick with peppercorn sauce, while…
The first time my parents left me out of a family vacation, I watched their minivan back down the driveway from my bedroom…
The hardcover math book left Raj’s hand so fast it was just a blur of blue and white flying through the air. For…
The first breath of free air outside the Texas state prison tasted like rust and flowers. Rust from the old chain-link fence that…
The first time Jay Lawson begged to go home, he was locked in a concrete box in the middle of the Arizona desert,…
The night I disappeared, the lights of downtown Chicago were still glittering in the reflection of my laptop screen, right above the numbers…
They voted me off the New Year’s cruise with a heart emoji. No raised voices. No dramatic phone call. Just a stream of…
The first thing I remember is the sound of metal hitting the floor. Not a drill. Not a suction tube. The whole tray.…
The sound that rewrote Lucas Carter’s life wasn’t a scream or a gunshot. It was metal folding in on itself on a…
On the night the burglars chose Jay Lawson’s house, the plastic reindeer on the front lawn was still blinking in the California heat,…
By the time Logan lifted his champagne glass and announced he’d inherited all eight of my grandmother’s rental houses, I’d already lined up…
The night my son was born, the NICU monitors hummed like a chorus of tiny machines fighting for his first breaths, and my…
The metal cake stand hit me before I even realized my father was swinging. One second I was in a ballroom in Riverside,…
The first time Jay Lawson ordered a drink at a bar, the glass wasn’t real and neither was he. Neon lights pulsed around…
The man in the $4,000 Italian suit laughed at his ex-wife in a Brooklyn courtroom. He laughed so loudly the sound bounced off…
The day my sister-in-law tried to poison me, the Texas sun was shining, the grill was smoking in my in-laws’ backyard, and someone…
The door to my office flew open so hard it bounced off the stopper and rattled the framed certificates on the wall, sending…
By the time the first bell rang at Westbrook Middle School, everyone in the eighth-grade hallway already knew two things: One, it was…
The night I realized I had finally destroyed my life, the only sound in my little Upstate New York house was the hum…
The first note was always the hardest. It hung there, just out of reach, as Clare Davidson stood at the back of the…
The bees hit the principal’s office before the bell did. One moment the hallway at Westview Middle School in Southern California was its…
I pressed my cheap hundred-dollar engagement ring into another woman’s palm in the middle of my own engagement party, and the whole apartment…
When the lawyer slid the folder across the polished oak table and said the words “two million dollars,” I could see my little…