Author name: Jenny Ng

Part 1 – The Jar of Pennies 1:03 a.m. The shop was dark, the street was empty, and a glass jar slid under my garage door like a message in a bottle from a kid who didn’t have anywhere else to send it. It rolled until it kissed my boot. Inside: copper and nickels and […]

Part 1 — The Boy in the Sidecar The boy climbed into my father’s sidecar, clicked the buckle across his chest, and stared down the security guard. “If you tow the bike, you have to tow me.” It was dismissal time at Monroe Elementary. Car lines, backpacks, teachers waving. In the middle of it was

They cut the power to a building full of seniors at 111°, then told us to “let the city handle it.” We didn’t. We couldn’t. We wouldn’t. Name’s Ruben Alvarez, but folks call me Patch. I’ve bent fenders and mended people for thirty years—first in uniform, now at a little body shop and on two

Part 1 – The Girl on the Courthouse Steps At 9:42 a.m., sixty-one engines went silent outside Family Court as a girl whispered, “They moved the hearing early so he can get me back.” I wasn’t there to make a scene. I was there because I’d parked crooked the day before school and owed thirty

Porch Lights & Chrome — Part 1 The third siren hit that thin, high note that makes the neighborhood dogs answer, and that’s when the stroller slipped. One loose wheel bumped off Tasha’s porch step, rolled down her short walkway, and started picking up speed toward Maple Ridge Road, where morning commuters were already easing

Part 1: Headlights in a Hallway At 3:07 a.m., forty beams of light slid across the hospital tile like a ribbon of highway come to life. No engines. No rumble. Just the slow drift of headlight lanterns—chrome-trimmed, battery-safe, cleaned and tagged—carried by riders in dark jackets now covered with disposable white gowns and blue shoe

He walked his motorcycle into floodwater like a bridge, lifted a stranger’s kid onto the seat, and kept her breathing—while his own shoulder was out of place. The rain had been hammering the valley since dawn, that strange new kind of storm the weather folks call an atmospheric river. By early afternoon, the creek behind

They said the biker had no pulse.The boy didn’t believe them. Morning mist clung to the crosswalk outside Franklin Elementary. A delivery van fishtailed when a stray coffee cup rolled under its tire. Brakes squealed. Parents shouted. A motorcycle slid low and clean, steel kissing asphalt in a controlled fall that turned the bike into

Part 1 — Oxygen at 88 The number slips from 92 to 88 just as my palm hits the glass. A soft alarm chirps. A nurse glances up. The door to the isolation room stays locked. A sign at eye level reads: NO VISITORS AFTER 10 PM. NO BULKY OUTERWEAR OR LARGE INSIGNIA IN CLINICAL

Part 1 – When the Road Fell into the River By the time the water climbed to the bottom of the street signs, the yellow school bus was already tilting like a cradle about to turn. On the bridge above, phones lifted and blinked like a row of tiny lighthouses. Down below, the only people