Marsha > Recent Status Updates

There are times when one single word triggers you, propels you into action, demands that you say something after weeks or years of silence. The one word that makes you say to yourself: no more. For Auntie Ruth, it was the word: alone. For me, is is: safe. Instead of staying sheltered in the kitchen, I move the Souper Bowl Sunday soup (clam chowder, Seahawks vs. Patriots) to the back burner.

"You." Mom's voice is blistering. Before I open my eyes, I know it's Josh. Some people go on dates; others wait in the lobby of the Children's Hospital. I scoot to the edge of the wheelchair, order my feet to hit the floor, close the span separating us, and fall into Josh's arms. But the shocked look on his face cements me to the wheelchair. I wish I could unsee that expression, proof that I'm not the Sick Girl.

"Slug-brain, no," says Aminta, my defender who's followed me inside the building. I think everyone in the hall is as startled as I am by Aminta's harsh tone. This is the girl who's been voted Most Likely to be Emma Watson int he UN and who's slated to fast track at MIT, where she'll invent some groundbreaking contraption that will change the emerging world. "You can't catch solar urticaria. It's not like the flu."

"The roof drains there," I said. "Those flagstones will only wobble again after the next rain." "That is how things go. You fix them and they go awry and then you fix them again." "You have a patient temper." "My father called it dullness. Shearing, cleaning out the hearths, pitting olives. He wanted to know how to do such things for curiosity's sake, but he did not want to actually have to do them."

"What brings the famous Daedalus to my shores?" His voice was steady. "I come as a messenger from your sister. She is with child, and her time approaches. She asks that you attend her delivery." I eyed him. "Are you certain you have come to the right place? There has never been love between my sister and me." "Pardon, lady, but she bids me tell you that if you do not help her there is no one else who can."

The cops respond to the chants with tear gas that blankets the crowd in a white cloud. The news cuts to footage inside the crowd of people running and screaming. Sekani buries his face in Momma's thigh. I feed Brickz a piece of my pot roast. The clenching in my stomach won't let me eat. Sirens wail outside. The news shows three patrol cars that have been set ablaze at the police precinct.

"Holy--what is that?" Brennan scrambled backward and tripped over the rug. He landed, the palm of his hand crunching on a shard of pottery. Gemini eyed him. "Aren't you a simple one?" she cooed, smoothing her sleek black hair. "It's a good thing you're not the one seeking Ophiuchus. You'd be pulp." But she offered her hand, helping him stand. She pulled a cloth from her pouch for his cut. This woman was manic.

"Go, Marcus. We need no help from Rome. We will care for ourselves. I thank you for your kindness, but we must be left alone to tend our wounds." "No, Boadicea. Now is not the time for you to reject a friend. With the smell of blood on you and being alone in the woods at night, defenseless and without weapons, wolves will prey on you. If not wolves, then forest bears. I will return shortly and bring transport."

But with his great wealth came times of great debt. Prasutagus was so often in debt at the time that tribute had to be paid, that he had been forced to borrow forty million sesterces from the Emperor Claudius himself, the interest on which absorbed much of the wealth that flowed into the land of the Iceni from its mines and forests and from the traders who traversed the land. He was trapped in a cycle of debt.

Mother was a wreck. Father was being strong, but he, too, was a wreck. Uncle Lester was coming to dinner. "We must all be upbeat," said Father. Mother sobbed. Lisi glared at Mother. She thought she had a right to expect more positive behavior from a parent. It was her opinion that Uncle Lester should have shot all the critics dead.

Mr. Head's menagerie was definitely not a zoo. Or maybe it was a zoo, but the kind where all of the animals were magical in some way, and free from their cages, and very friendly. A hundred strange smells tickled Micah's nose, and twice as many strange noises pressed against his ears. He could hardly take a step forward without running into a creature more peculiar than any he had ever imagined.

Tokiwa probably understood Itsuki's situation quite well. Itsuki's parents were deceased, his family home was gone, and his lack of real work experience would make it difficult to find a new job. Tokiwa must be concerned about Itsuki's future and wanted to discuss these matters in detail. Itsuki shook his head, trying to chase away his dark thoughts.

"You know what's awesome? The way everyone--every single one of you--just walks around lying to me. All the time. Because, oh, it's Arthur, and he can't handle our scary big secrets. You guys want to get a divorce? Fine. Just tell me." Mom's mouth falls open. "Divorce?" "Come on." "Arthur, what? Your dad and I are fine." "You're not fine." She peers at me strangely. "How long have you been stressing about this?"

Dinner is almost read, and I feel like the world's most unnecessary tour guide as I show them around the living room. But when I see Arthur studying every picture hanging from the wall, I remember that home isn't about how big the space is but how we fill it. Above the TV is the framed Puerto Rican flag that Abuelita brought over when she and Ma moved from their home city of Rincón to New York.

Dylan clears his throats. "Oh yeah. Really excited to advance my education in Greek, Ancient, and Modern studies, you know. I kind of want to name my son Achilles because I think there's a lesson here about downfalls." It's like Dylan tries to out-Dylan himself sometimes. "Sounds way more fun than Ethics, Politics, and Economics," Kent says. "Fun times."

"Are you talking about Sheryl?" Jane asks excitedly. "I just wrung it out of Brandt--shotgun wedding right after graduation." "No way!" exclaims Gwen. Gwen had not been trumped in gossip since Miss Heffley, our third-grade teacher, had a nervous breakdown and the principal lied and told us it us it was a family emergency. "My father says that Sheryl and Bradt's mother will probably go to jail soon."

Once again I survey all the only-child perks in his room, the stereo and hundreds of CDs, a room that if my brother Eric were to awaken in all by himself, without Teddy peeing int he bunk bed above him, he'd think he'd died and gone to heaven. Craig turns on his state-of-the art computer and we look up the stocks the broker has chosen and read on-line reports that explain what the companies do.

"Would you like to stay for dinner, Hallie? We're having--what are we having, Bertie?" "Ruby-glazed lamb with oven-roasted new potatoes, Mother. And of course for you and what's-his-name I've prepared beans, haricots verts, and some other herbivore-friendly fare." Then he turns to me and announces, "Mother is a vegetarian", in a way that indicates she cannot possibly appreciate good food.

I have just had an interview with the Devil. Is not that strange? What is stranger still is that I leave the interview not fearful, not awestruck, not cast down--but, rather, feeling a little sad for the fellow, and wondering how I might contrive to sometime have him round for tea. He seems to me on the whole a decent chap, and I am struck that perhaps we (by which I mean humanity) have misunderstood him.

I find I must continually stop myself from contemplating her dalliance. I am not a prudish man, let it be understood. This age of morality is not one I have an affinity for, nor is it one I deem good. But be that as it may, when one hears that one's sister is-- As I say, I must stop myself from thinking on it. It is best unthought, unspoken, and unheard.

“Are you saying,” I asked, “that these are all lost masterpieces by people like Tacitus? That this”--I pointed at Watch by Night--“is a bona fide Hemingway?” “Yes,” she said. I took another long look around. Thousands of volumes filled the shelves, packed tight, reaching to the ceiling. “It’s not possible,” I said. “How? How could it happen?” “Quite easily,” she said.

The gangly man was running up the street, his long legs pushing through the fresh unplowed snow. He was a stranger; or at least that was her initial impression. In ways that Mary couldn't quite define, he acted both lost and at home. His face and manner were confused, yet he nonetheless seemed to navigate as if he recognized some portion of his surroundings. From a distance, his features seemed pleasantly anonymous.

I was going to get into so much trouble if I was caught. I whirled back and grabbed books quickly, filling my backpack. I grabbed history books and poetry and a bunch of Dorothy Sayers novels. I left some space at the top, just in case Emily Bronte turned up, and finally found what I wanted, several battered paperback copies of Wuthering Heights, hidden on the lower shelf of the Recent Returns (ha!) trolley.

"So tell us about this Librarian," said Bucephalus. The Librarian shook her head. "She doesn't really like to be discussed." "Tell us about the labyrinth, then," Euclavia suggested. The Librarian smiled. "It changes without notice. Try not to get caught between the sliding stacks when they move. We can check you out a ball of twine." "We have one." Euclavia held it up. "Good," said the Librarian.

From the first notes of the guitar, the volume was louder than before--one of the roadies must have cranked up the amplifier--but it wasn't coming through to my ears. All of my senses were occupied with Sebastian: his broad shoulders and green T-shirt, his new, long hair swinging around his chin, the occasional pause he made midlyric to lift his eyebrows or bite his lip.

Somehow, "thinking about it" turned into "actually purchasing it," and so I ended up with my first mostly backless top. It was only twenty bucks, which seemed an order of magnitude less than what I'd expected clothes to cost in New York, and something about being out in a big city, unsupervised, made me fell okay with making spontaneous sartorial decisions. Tess, on the other hand, rejected the rest of everything.

"These are really good, too." Zach indicated his pumpkin cookies. "If I do say so myself." No new messages. The fresh people shifted their collective weight. "How much?" one said tentatively. "A dollar," Zach said. "Everything's a dollar." The other girl wrinkled her nose. "Why are they orange?" "They have pumpkin in them," I explained. "But not in a weird way."

The first and last time she played this instrument, she had lost her shadow and found herself cast out of her home as a dead thing. She wondered what she might lose if she played it again. Maybe her hair. Maybe her toes. Maybe the music would sever her shadow so completely that Kaile would never see Shade again. Whatever it might do, Kaile decided that she didn't care.

Going to the tool shed, he sought out a spade, then dug a neat grave beside that of his mother. He wrapped his father in a sheet, laid him in the excavation, filled it in and erected a plain wooden name-post. The work took slightly over half an hour. For a short while afterwards Jasperodus stood before the little cottage, taking in the landscape that lay before him, with its mostly wooded rolling hills.

"Jasperodus! I am so glad to have found you. Have you seen Caught in the Web yet? It is superb!" "I haven't found the time." "Please do. The reviews do not mislead. Such a clever counterbalancing of themes...you'll get a good laugh out of it, too." Jasperodus' interlocutor was a fellow robot, Gemin, one of a number whose duties in the administration had also led them to enter the social life of the court.