At fourteen, Vanessa Hoffman started complaining of headaches and fatigue. Her stomach was finicky, and her appetite dwindled. Sometimes she found herself out of breath and sometimes her hands and legs felt numb and sometimes her joints hurt. Her balance would go off intermittently. She answered adults with “Yes, sir” and “Yes, ma’am” and mostly […]
It was the sound of waves on Lake of the Woods that woke me. The rhythm of the swells hitting the shore made the suggestion of wind. When it was calm, I’d awaken to birdsong and water lightly lapping at the beach. Today it was the chatter of gulls and the lake’s violent cadence that […]
“Cher, wake up,” Frank whispered, shaking her gently. “It’s late.” She opened her eyes and the bedroom filled with bright morning sunlight. At first she saw only the empty room, her clothes on the floor, the sheet she’d thrown over Frank the night before bunched at the bottom of the bed. Her back ached from […]
It was strange how she felt then, sitting alone in the dark in the crotch of an old oak tree deep in the backwoods of Virginia holding a dead cell phone in her hand. Free was part of it. But also unmoored. Untethered. It was her father who had insisted she buy a cell phone […]