The New Yorker: "Victory Lap" by George Saunders

Last week's story was very good, but this one is better. Or at least I enjoyed it more and was more compelled to keep reading. Alison is fourteen, almost fifteen. She's a typical teen, maybe brighter than most. She does ballet, loves everyone, has an active imagination (love the thing with the talking baby deer from whom she hides the death of its mother), and looks down on the neighbor kid, Kyle, with whom she played as a kid. But Kyle, into whose point of view we shift, is also pretty norma...