Once the coffee cooled I took a sip and said, Not bad for McDonald's coffee.

And he said, It really is a good cup of coffee. Wherever you go, you can always depend on McDonald's for a good cup of coffee.

And I thought, McDonald's coffee is trash.

You roamed in like a chuckling bear into my house of beakers, graduated cylinders, round bottom flasks, you asked to borrow an Erlenmeyer, here you go, I said, thought you were just a clumsy animal, afraid you'd break something of mine, pushed you out of the lab and you came back bearing M&M's in a petri dish, half of them a mess of Blue No. 2

When I was small, I was certain he hung the moon. It’s still a possibility—I can, in fact, imagine his immaculate frame climbing a ladder upward—but in twenty years I’ve become less certain about everything, even him.

For the better part of every year I try like heck to be a better person. Nicer. More caring. This year I’ve taken up breathing. I breathe in and I breathe out each day. Last year I learned to put less

Rome was good. Sat ninety in the summers. Leaned on his off speed when the weather got cold. Postseason, most of the district had seen him by then, we took advantage of teams whose scouts said he was

I played left field for the Tularosa Middle School Tarantulas girl’s team. I was long and brittle, like a cactus spine. Or a splinter. And I was afraid of the baseball. I batted .083 that summer and

I pick up Henry after work and we drive 65 miles to the first game of Colin’s fall AAU league. It costs enough, but college is looming and some short-term discomfort for the chance at a scholarship is

I was about to witness Kershaw’s first career no-hitter on TV when pieces of meat started to pour from the skies and slap the ground. Our house rattled as we rushed to the windows and watched the

The world and weather are telling us they’re not ready for baseball, but I choose not to believe that. It’s too cold to call this rain, but too wet to classify it as sleet. I’m prepared for the chill

Two things are clear to Ava: It’s time to end things with Nico, and Thad Worley might not make it out of the first inning.

He’s next to her in the left field bleachers chewing on a hang nail and

I was cruising through the lineup, 6-0, decimating my neighbors in our annual July Fourth softball tournament when a pinch hitter came to the plate. It took a minute — two pitches, actually — to place

The bat was a gift from her father. It was a souvenir bat, one-of-a-kind. “This bat,” said her father, “is more than just a bat. It is a special bat, a valuable bat. It is not to be used. It is not to

She was going up to Poughkeepsie to see a girl she had met on the internet who, promisingly, shared her passion for Gary Larson comics.

She opens her mouth to speak, then shuts it, starts to laugh. ‘I guess we're both freaks.’

My six-year-old son stretches his arms to their limit as he describes his latest nightmare.

with an introduction from Matt Bell

She could eat. She could get a little plump, not so plump that he wouldn’t like it, but plumper than before she knew him, when she had to stay thin and dainty so she could get married and become plump, though no more than he liked.

If we accept the conventional ATF line, bootleggers are scoundrels of the worst sort, caring only for the almighty dollar, men who will poison you with hootch run through junk radiators and contaminated with everything from antifreeze to dead rats.

Find your mark. As American as they come. Like this couple, standing a few feet to your left. Around your age, but taller, sturdier, sun-fed and muscular. Their smiles remind you of neatly racked milk bottles.  

It was during the seventh experiment that I died, or I think I died—I mean, I must have died because if I hadn’t there surely would have been a lawsuit of some sort, and I’d know about it by now if I hadn’t died. Maybe I’d be filthy rich and wouldn’t have to keep signing up for these research studies and tests just to pay my bills. And to buy my pills.

The man who used to be my husband wanted to hook up.  “Right here,” he said after parking our Nissan Sable in the road we used to live on and killing the headlights

After last night, I’m no longer allowed at The Mint Bar. You could say it’s because I choked the owner’s daughter up against the wall next to the jukebox that only plays Cash songs—pushed her hard enough that a quarter fell from the coin slot—or you could say she deserved it.

I’m in accounting. Sally in the lab. Among her other duties, Sally is an odor judge. Her nose is rather ordinary to look at, what my grandma might have called a button nose. But Sally’s nose is legend.

Just another dead body in a city of dead bodies, right? This world is out to eat me, Chase. I feel the scratch of its teeth.

The Chetrams were from Trinidad and listened to Bollywood music on the weekends. They were good, hardworking people. Their kids were polite. They were not Muslims as far as their neighbors could tell, since Chetram liked Miller Lite and the daughter wore high-waisted shorts in the summer. It was not polite to inquire.