I think I like it better when we have school. Summer is so long and boring. Too many empty hours with nothing to do. We never go anywhere. I wouldn’t be able to tell which direction time is traveling if it weren’t for the TV shows that guide us through drab days toward dreary, uninteresting…

I just wanna eat lunch. Mommy promised if I was good, we could have grilled cheese at the counter inside the Woolworth’s. No more hamburgers, not since the last time we ate there. She said the chop meat went bad. It tasted fine to me. It tasted fine to me at first, and then all…

Yes, I spend a lot of time with my drug dealer’s wife. But let me be very clear about one thing. We’re not friends. She thinks we are, and it gives me the creeps. “There’s my Mary. Mary had a little lamb.” Laureen gushes, when I finally get somebody to open the door and let…

Virginia lives up the street. She has a backyard and a pool. Lawn chairs that unfold so you can lay flat and go to sleep. We don’t have any of these things. We weren’t even supposed to be at this party, me and Judy. Mommy said no at first, even though Judy and Virginia are…

I smashed my thumb trying to open a bottle of wine with a hammer and a butter knife. Now, my finger hurts like crazy. I ran it under cold water, but the Motherfucker bled like a pig. Probably gonna lose the nail. Shit looks split right down the middle, which I wouldn’t even think is…

He ran up from behind and threw a hug around her legs as she heated a pot of water for tea. I think that’s how it happened. Kirin arrives for his visit with gauze, ointment and medical tape to hold the dressing in place, detailed instructions. “Grandma says you’ll have to change my bandage.” They…

I have a crush on J.P. Rogers. He lives around the corner in the light green house. He’s younger than me by two years and three months I know that seems like a lot, especially when you’re boyfriend and girlfriend. I get how people in love should be around the same age, but I really…

Daddy found six orange life jackets in somebody’s garbage and brought them home. I helped him unload the car and marched across the kitchen wearing one. “Get that dirty shit off your back,” my mother said. “They’re good for the beach. Do you want I should drown?” “You can’t swim, numbnuts. Outside.” “They’re brand new,”…

I’ve been back in the Bronx for less than two weeks, trapped with my parents in the house where I grew up. My mother and I both swore over heaps of dead bodies I’d never live here again. She’s meaner than ever since I returned. I have a new job lined up, but it doesn’t…

Mommy makes me and Judy stay with the shopping cart when we’re at the A&P. We can’t go down the candy aisle by ourselves. That means I have to fish around the shelves for loose m&ms when she’s not looking. Once when I was on my hands and knees, I saw a mouse. We stared…