The Piggly Wiggly smells like baking chicken as I hustle in past a leaning stack of boxed soda. The crumpled piece of notebook paper in my hand is moist with the sweat from my palm.
Three things. I can get three things. Surely I can manage that.
This time, I’ll get it right. This time, Mina will get what she sent me for.
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My undead grandmother is my conscience.
By “undead” I don’t mean a decrepit, old woman who looks like she shouldn’t still be sucking wind. I mean a decrepit, old woman who died of a heart attack three months ago yet still manages to ruin my life.
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I love you. –Jack
I sat on the roof of the barn, reading the note over again. I didn’t know a Jack.
I’d already searched the school, asking every unknown boy if his name was Jack—yes, I’m that type of person.
No Jacks went to my school.
Crash!
Lase sighed. She hated doing this, especially with her brother.
“Yuck!” More banging.
“Tim, quiet! We’ll get caught,” she hissed.
“What do you even take from an apota…apot-a-carry?”
“Apothecary, you dolt. We’re here for healing ointments.”
“Is this it?” He emerged, reeking of a floral scent with swamp water highlights.
It was 7:00 p.m. on a muggy summer Sunday—a time when any sane man would’ve been at home with a cold one, but there’d been word that the gangster known as Jitters was bringing in a shipment that night—and I was at the station, trying to find somebody who knew something.
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What I wouldn’t give for a chocolate cupcake. Unfortunately, Dad’s grocery shopping never included desserts. My snack would likely consist of veggies and hummus. I dropped my backpack and scrunched my nose. It’d been so itchy lately.
At least I’d get cake tomorrow for my sixteenth birthday.
I hopped onto the bus with music still bouncing through the wires in the back of my head. The hydraulic hiss of the door cut off the cries of the doctors running to catch me. I waved at them as the bus pulled out and joined the flood of neon San Diego traffic under the rose gold sky.
The visual should have been concerning, but, hopped up as I was, the pearl white road and amber horizon seemed more or less normal. People ogled me with dark faces rimmed in blues and reds.
King Falton stared at his empty banqueting hall. This would be his third midwinter feast since taking the throne. The first had been subdued in honor of his beloved father’s death. The second had been a debacle. Falton’s parents had him late in life, therefore, at the time of his father’s passing,
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Melvin pulled two ties from his closet and held them up in front of the mirror. He’d been single for so long, it was hard to believe he’d connected with Sophie as well as he had.
“Lexi, search restaurants near me.”
The beauty of a Wednesday night date was that last minute reservations were possible.
By Justin Mynheir “This is quite a pickle. Isn’t it, dear?” Dave leaned against the inside of the rusted cage. Down the cliffside, across an amphitheater of ancient stone ruins claimed by jungle growth, suspended over a bubbling pool of lava, Karen fidgeted in her rope bindings. “You think?!” “I think plenty, but even my
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A table of contents for the Mythington Minute photo comic featuring Phenny the phoenix.
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We’ll have dinner soon, Buddy,” Babe insisted.
I couldn’t see what she was dicing on the counter. I sniffed. Beef maybe?
The phone rang. “Wait a minute. I’ve got to answer this.”
I groaned. I tugged at her arm, trying to remind her about our dinner, but she shooed me away. Babe liked to talk.
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