The Story Maximalist

Part 1 — The Night the Lights Went Out My father did not show up to walk me down the aisle.Ten minutes later, the whole town watched him on a shaky livestream, standing in the middle of a dead intersection, arms spread wide, guiding an ambulance through a river of stalled cars in the blackout. […]

Part 1 — The Bead in the Sunlight Caleb saw it before he knew what he was seeing—a tiny flash on hot stone, a turquoise bead catching nine a.m. sun. Five search flights had skimmed this canyon. Dozens of trucks had rolled past. But at twenty-five miles an hour, the old eyes of a biker

At 4:12 a.m., something scraped inside a plastic bin beneath the overpass and made the kind of sound that slices through a helmet, through a chest, through sleep itself. I had pulled off because my front brake started singing a high, metallic whine. Rain ticked on the concrete. Traffic thundered above like a far-off storm.

Part 1 — Dawn Checkout I shoved Grandma Jo’s wheelchair through the laundry door while the transfer van idled at the curb and an email flashed on my phone: her move got bumped to this morning. Eight minutes. Two blinks from her good eye. Yes. They call it “transition.” I am thirteen and I have

Part 1 — The Note on the Hot Hood She set the paper on my scorching hood like it might burn a hole through both of us. Ink bled where sweat and tears had fallen. In a voice barely bigger than a whisper she said, “If you look scary, could you please use it for

The little girl pressed her palm to my idling engine, felt its voice, then signed one word: HOME? People say engines have a sound. Mine has a heartbeat. The Indian Scout I call Bluebird sat there purring in the Sunday heat, paint the color of a lake before dawn. I cut the throttle so the

Part 1 — Spin Cycle Three patrol cars slid to the curb outside Suds City, light bars cold and silent. Inside, a tattooed giant cradled a wooden box of quarters while a small deaf boy signed, Don’t go. The fluorescent lights hummed. Dryers coughed warm air that smelled like bleach and old raincoats. Phones came

Part 1 – Are You Cuffing the Flowers? A machine screamed thief. A widowed biker buying lilies for his late wife froze—until a tiny voice in a polka-dot raincoat asked, “Are you arresting the flowers?” Rain came down like silver threads, stitching the parking lot to the gray afternoon. Ray “Ghost” Delgado stood under the

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