Marsha > Recent Status Updates

"So, boys?" he says. "What do you say?"
Angel clears his throat. "We'll need to get back to you."
"What?"
"We will consider your offer, says Ruben. "However, you did effectively sever your relationship with us."
"I--"
"So," I say. "We will be exploring our options. When we're ready, our lawyers will be in touch."
"Jon..."
"I'm sorry, Dad, it's just business. Goodbye."
Jon's window goes black.

"It's just a temporary restriction, Angel. It's not forever."
"It is forever. They'll never let us go, Ruben."
"Come on. You know that's not true."
Angel slows to catch his breath and swings around. "You're not dumb. You know. You...you know, and you don't say it. But I know you see it. You can see what they're doing to us."
Zach tugs on my coat sleeve as he reaches me. "They're in the fire escape," he says.

I load my Spotify. I've been listening to a compilation album of B-sides and rarities by one of my favorite bands, which isn't really the best hype music. What I want is a song we can drink to that lets us forget everything. I end up picking a hyperpop song I know Angel loves. I hit play.
"Nice choice," says Angel, who starts bopping along. "Seems like you have some good taste."
"Hah."

"I think if you were a genie you'd live in your globe lamp and you'd ride this carpet everywhere taking pictures. You could get some pretty amazing shots from a magic carpet. You could go to Egypt and take pictures of kids riding the Sphinx. In Mexico you'd take pictures of kids in Day of the Dead masks running through the graveyards. and in exchange for letting you take their pictures you could grant their wishes."

"Lily sounds right for you," says Meadows. "May we call you Lily?"
"Sure."
Mallard says, "You must be exhausted, Lily. Would you like to sleep on our couch? It might be more comfortable than your grandfather's apartment. There isn't any furniture there."
"He wasn't really my true grandfather," I say. "He was my almost-grandfather. He's Weetzie's dad and she met my dad when she was working at Duke's."

on the set of Los Diablos, My secret Agent Lover Man and Weetzie sat in their canvas chairs, watching a group of dark children gathered in a circle around a glowing blue ball. Valentine was putting some finishing touches on a hut he had built. Ping was painting some actors glossy blue. Dirk and Duck were in the office making phone calls and looking at photos.

After two volatile public meetings, the board adopted a policy limiting sex-segregated restroom access to students "of the corresponding biological genders." A nonvoting student member of the board, Campbell Farina, said she wasn't hearing much common sense in the discussions. "How would you all feel if this was a question of race? It's the same thing."

Something in the room felt off, like the air itself was too thick to breathe. In all her years of knowing Naomi, it had never been like this.
Pip gave Naomi a reassuring smile and made a passing joke about the amount of dog hair attached to her own leggings. Naomi smiled weakly, twisting the ends of her tawny hair.
They were sitting in Mr. Ward's study: Pip on the swiveling desk chair, and Naomi across from her.

"Thanks for coming," she says. "These parties are getting really same-y. I thought I'd spice things up."
I don't know how she thought I would spice things up. It seems like to spice things up you bring a hardcore band to a party full of museum donors, or a hooker to a Varican function. Bringing a quiet nerd to a party full of loud theater dorks does not seem like spicing things up. But I don't complain.

TO WALK INTO A PARTY WITH FRANCES went a little something like this: They would enter, and the music would pause for just a fraction of a second before starting up again. A hundred small murmurs and whispers would burst into life from all corners of the room. Heads turned; glances were thrown sidelong. Once, a fat little dog-in-arms sensed the subtle shift in mood and immediately urinated all down its owner's gown.

"You lied to me."
"Not really. I didn't want Roverella to see me either. I didn't want anyone to see me. I'm gross."
Aggie nodded. That made sense to her, which made Claude feel even worse, which he hadn't realized was actually possible.
"Well"--Aggie made her eyes widen and her head shake and her shoulders shrug in the most adult way she knew to express befuddlement.

Ben’s secret was this: he was in love with Cayenne. It was a secret for a number of reasons. One was he was embarrassed: it was such a cliché to fall in love with the girl next door. Another was he had been in love with her since the moment he met her at that barbecue in her backyard the weekend before they started eighth grade, and sometimes she loved him back and sometimes she did not.

{T}he risk of sexual abuse is seen as an inevitable cost of political trepass. On the vast, heavily patrolled corridor along the US-Mexico border, aid organizations estimated in 2014 that 80 percent of women and girls had been raped in transit--an apparent increase from a 2010 Amnesty International study showing that 60 percent were raped.

Meanwhile, the storm tossed the clouds into a thousand gigantic shapes, and the tumultuous sea grew blacker and more wild; her natural gloom was heightened by superstitious horror. The Moirae, the Fates of her native Grecian soil, howled in the breezes; apparitions, which told of her child pining under the influence of the Evil Eye, and of her husband--the prey of some Grecian witchcraft haunted her broken slumbers.

Meanwhile, the storm tossed the clouds into a thousand gigantic shapes, and the tumultuous sea grew blacker and more wild; her natural gloom was heightened by superstitious horror. The Moirae, the Fates of her native Grecian soil, howled in the breezes; apparitions, which told of her child pining under the influence of the Evil Eye, and of her husband--the prey of some Grecian witchcraft haunted her broken slumbers.

He escaped from Africa, wandered through Syria, crossed to Europe, found occupation in Constantinople--and thus years passed. At last, as he was on the point of marriage with a Fanariote beauty, he fell again into poverty, and he returned to Corinth to see if his father's fortunes had prospered during his long wanderings. He found that, while these had improved to a wonder, they were lost to him forever.

He swore many an oath, and I adjured him by many a sacred name, till I saw this wonder of power, this ruler of the elements, shiver like an autumn leaf before my words; and as if the spirit spake unwillingly and perforce within him, at last he, with broken voice, revealed the spell whereby he might be obliged, did he wish to play me false, to render up the unlawful spoil.

When they come back inside, Jeanne is sitting on the floor, Linda's head in her lap, Nick's record collection scattered around her. Linda is smoking a neatly rolled joint. When Andy sits down beside them, she offers it to him.
"Don't give it to Andy," says Emily from the sofa. "He won't know what it is or what to do with it, the poor lamp."
"I know what it is," protests Andy.

Lying in a pose of exquisite careless grace across a couch was a young girl, fast asleep. She was lovelier than any girl that Prince had ever yet beheld. Her long hair was strewn about the cushions, her soft lashes were dark little fans upon either petal cheek. Her lips, the hue and texture of poppies, were faintly parted. She breathed, that was all; and hers was not the stillness of childish slumber.

'Here, you--you,' he had cried, 'I do not know who you are, but at least you look like a woman. come and show these obstinate young ladies how to drop a curtsy.'
Now Bridgit and Alathea knew very well that Cinderella was an adept in this art; they had seen her practise it gracefully when the younger and the duller Princes had been invited to the houses of their friends.

She wasn't lost. She wasn't.
Even if his absence from her home, her bed, her arms, left her hollow-eyed and aching down to her joints some days. Even if she watched British baking shows while she ate takeout for dinner because claggy sponges and underproofed dough reminded her of him.
Even if she loved him, and he loved her in return.
When she shut off her bedside lamp way too late at night, she still saw him.

Leaning back again, she braced herself and began to rock on him. Not up and down, because she was too far gone for that. Back and forth, against that agile, teasing thumb, as his cock filled her and spread her wide.
"April." his other hand was squeezing her hip in a possessive hold. "April."
When he shifted beneath her, she cried out, the bolt of pleasure between her thighs unexpected.

'I stand by what I said. We will let Father believe it was my doing.'
'Are you sure?'
'I am.' Penn took a breath. 'Why did you do it, Jo?'
She gave him a tight smile. 'Because you love him.'
They hurried up the remainder of the stairs. From the upper landing, they could hear raised voices coming from the solar. They approached the closed door on silent footsteps.

He headed back upstairs, hoping that Penn had returned to the guest rooms, or had let himself into Raff's chambers.
Both were empty.
Penn was gone, just like that. All it took was one night, and he'd vanished from Raff's life quicker than he'd appeared.
This was what Raff had offered, an age ago now. He'd planned to find Penn somewhere to thrive without the shadow looming over him that had the shape of his father.

"Maybe a sauna too. Antton has one and it's sweet."
"You've used Antton's sauna?"
"Jealous?"
"Of course I'm jealous. Of you, I mean." He paused. "Maybe also of Antton."
Casey laughed, and Landon smiled up at the sky. The contrast between the frigid air and the hot water was exciting. It was exciting being here with Casey.
They sat side by side, even though they were alone and the tub was big enough for eight people.

He wanted them to have fun. and, if he was being honest, he wanted some alone time with Casey before a couple of days of even more family.
"We need to leave early because Brooke is going be [sic] getting to the cabin in the afternoon," Michelle said. "And I have to hit a grocery store and a few other places before we leave town. We can get those chowder ingredients."

I was back in my quarters just after eleven p.m. when there was a gentle knock on my door. I called for the person to enter and Gayle appeared, the weight of the day resting on her shoulders. I muted the TV, a program playing in the background that I hadn't been paying attention to anyway. There were other things on my mind. Midnight was just an hour away.

The security office in Buckingham Palace hid in the heart of the building, tucked away like a secret. It was a small fortress that housed the team tasked with protecting us at all costs. Few had access beyond its metal doors, which could only be opened with verified identification cards that had to be signed off by the head of security and the monarch.

Candie shoots her eyes at me again. She opens her mouth, and I turn immediately and rush out of the dance studio. I run straight down the hall and out the back door of the building, into the darkened parking lot. The moon hangs high in a cloudless night sky. We've been at it since 9:00 A.M. I collapse onto my butt on the sidewalk.
I'm shaking. From humiliation or exhaustion, I don't know.
Or maybe from fear.

Being proper grown-ups, we stop eating our all-you-can-eat breakfast when we've actually had as much as we want instead of filling our boots on principle, and then we go for a nice little wander around the middle of Sheffield, which with Jonathan in tow I'm seeing in a bit of a new light. I mean don't get me wrong it's still just a town, and not one that austerity was especially kind to.