Ed's note: This story originally ran on Hobart in 2010. In celebration of the upcoming<a class="more" href="/web_features/brass-on-oak-oak-on-marble-marble-on-glass-glass-on-steel">... more</a>

Four decades after breaking off our high school romance, we found each other again, I, Phillip, twenty-five years into my second marriage, and I, Lily, divorced.

Toby was blind. He was different. We left him alone.

The fact that it happened at the town's polar bear research station is irrelevant. A polar bear didn't kill the child.

The parents were not without greed, and so the younger painted, and as she painted the painting changed. 

On the night I left your apartment, my phone died.

“I’m helping you get in touch with your heritage,” Susana said to Tom, foisting the grocery bag onto the counter.  She pulled the tub of<a class="more" href="/web_features/taco-kit">... more</a>

What I could buy with the insurance money they gave me when you died:

One Ferrari, red or black, assuming V-8 instead of V-12,<a class="more" href="/web_features/what-i-could-buy">... more</a>

I’m in Tom's apartment staring at the big deer head he has hanging on the wall of his living room. Tom has a small place<a class="more" href="/web_features/the-god-of-the-living-room">... more</a>

She asks me to tell her a story. Almost every night she can’t sleep. I’m no storyteller, I’ll say, and at first I<a class="more" href="/web_features/how-i-spent-my-summer-vacation">... more</a>

I am driving through the hill country when I spot up ahead, in the dip between two hills, this young buck with his thumb out, sleeveless, flaunting the white underside of a supple tanned bicep

I was wearing white lipstick when I pressed a kiss onto the dirty window in the back corner of his mother’s garage, pasting<a class="more" href="/web_features/him-or-his-brother">... more</a>

The girl you spent a whole summer watching Beverly Hills 90210 and eating McDonald’s lunches with ran up behind you, taking hold of your backpack.

I ran into myself at the grocery store the other day. The store had just run out of Cookie Crisp cereal. The<a class="more" href="/web_features/somewhere-between-now-and-the-zucchini">... more</a>

Another dry day, so I build my wall—cinderblocks delivered to my driveway— and another house for sale sign comes down and the new neighbors,<a class="more" href="/web_features/animals">... more</a>

I start working in the bakery because I think of it as romantic. I count each sugared donut while composing hypothetical letters to past<a class="more" href="/web_features/leftovers">... more</a>

Before I was fired from Pinnacle Heating &amp; Air, my boss had me drive to Limon to pick up the most expensive<a class="more" href="/web_features/cowboys-don-39-t-eat-their-horses">... more</a>

Ethan’s virtual shrink said this would be good for him. It’s his first time in a human touch center, even though they’ve been popping up<a class="more" href="/web_features/hold-on">... more</a>

The Mortadella

Sometimes when my husband and I argue he eats<a class="more" href="/web_features/plotlines-from-tv-rsquo-s-nbsp-the-sopranos-nbsp-re-interpreted-by-lydia-davis">... more</a>

Two days before Halloween I caught my wife having sex with my best friend Dave in a position we’d never tried in seven years of marriage. She<a class="more" href="/web_features/ghost">... more</a>

Nelson stands on the corner of two major intersections in Springfield. He stands inert, periodically blinking as if waiting<a class="more" href="/web_features/nelson-from-the-simpsons">... more</a>

Good morning. Vincent Peppers here and I just thought this day is a grave. Terrible words to have running through your<a class="more" href="/web_features/vincent-peppers-at-the-podium">... more</a>

Recovery

After draining the toilet I put everything in the toilet. I drank a bottle of cough syrup and went outside. The cat spoke to<a class="more" href="/web_features/6-fictions">... more</a>

Did you eat?

Yes.

There’s carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.

Oh, good. I’ll have some later.

And<a class="more" href="/web_features/transcript-sept-14">... more</a>

Look at me.

Look at all the neat things I can do. Can you do this?

Follow me. Do like I'm doing. Put your stomach flat on the floor,<a class="more" href="/web_features/nubbins">... more</a>