Spectacle - 16-year-old giantess and super-wild best friend look for love and a sense of okayness in the world #YA #Literary

Spectacle

by Angie McCullagh


THE DOCTOR’S OFFICE was stark. White paper crinkled under Emily every time she moved. In a rack on the wall were magazines, mostly for little kids: Highlights. My Big Backyard. Cricket. One Seventeen.
This doctor was a pediatric endocrinologist. Emily’s dad, who, unlike Melissa, found her staggering growth infinitely disturbing, had suggested the appointment. Melissa set it up and drove Emily downtown.
The doctor talked to Melissa about things like “bone age” and phalanges and cartilage. He was going to send Emily to the lab to have her hand X-rayed. From the X-ray, the doctor would be able to predict, to a certain extent, how tall Emily would grow.
She’d overheard a conversation between her dad and Melissa a couple weeks before, Emily standing at the top of the stairway while her dad said, “She’s going to lap me, M. Jesus Christ. My daughter’s an amazon.” There was silence then. Until he burst forth with, “We know she doesn’t have anything wrong with her pituitary gland, from what Dr. Watkins said when she was, I don’t know, nine or ten, but my God. What if she’s going to hit seven feet or something?”
Ever the optimist, Melissa said, “WNBA?”
Emily was scared of what the X-ray would tell them. She thought she’d rather not know where she’d end up. Kind of like she’d rather not have any inkling of the day she’d die.

"The Unauthorized Biography of Michele Bachmann (and other stories)" by Ken Brosky

I knew this guy, babe, he could do things with his mouth you ain’t never seen. And I ain’t talking about sex here, all right? All right? Get your head out of the gutter and listen to me, because this is a story that’s gonna blow your mind.

There was a guy named Steve who called himself Nines and a guy named Simon who called himself Case. And they were both Phreaks—not the kind we used to make fun of back in high school, not those freaks. I’m talking about Phreaks, babe: phone hackers. Guys who could work the phone system. They could do things that weren’t even supposed to be possible. Getting free calls was just the beginning for these guys, babe.

Let me start with Nines, because Nines was the godfather of them all. Nines didn’t really start the whole idea of phone hacking, I don’t think, because there’s no way to tell who really first started hacking phones, you know? But Nines was something incredible, and he knew it and he flaunted it. What did he do? I’ll tell you what he did.

He whistled.

"The Legend of Sasquatch" by William T. Prince

Clint’s body count was now up to five--six including the vegetable. Killing was becoming a habit, and Clint realized that it was starting to bother him less each time. He feared that he was becoming desensitized to death, too accustomed to killing.

"Quiet Americans" by Erika Dreifus

You will go to Germany. You will go, after years and years of refusing to go (even when you traveled through the rest of Europe after your freshman year of college), just as you refused to learn German until circumstances (that is to say, graduate school requirements) forced you to. But if your grandparents, may they rest in peace, managed to go back and visit, way back in 1972, then you can go. You will be practically next door in beautiful baroque Central Europe for a conference; you really should go while someone else has paid your transatlantic airfare. So you will.

     You are an American. You are a grown-up. What’s to worry about? Even now, even this summer of 2004, when your own homeland needs security, and every time you watch the news you’re afraid you’ll hear about another suicide bombing on a bus in Israel.

     You talk with your best friend before you leave. You say: “I don’t know which is worse, at this point. To be an American in Europe—or to be a Jew.

     Your best friend is also an American Jew. She also has European-born grandparents. Hers survived a total of seven camps. Your best friend doesn’t have an answer.

"A Physician's Plight: A Memoir" by Katherine Klein, M.D.

Tension mounted as the marriage collapsed. My life revolved around denying he did nothing while I took care of our children and the responsibility of patients and residency. He wouldn’t leave his cushy situation and I was as scared of leaving him as I was of staying. He left for his evening sports game and I executed my plan:

I grabbed toys that were nearby and looked at the door, expecting it to burst open. I’d almost forgotten the boy’s stuffed animals, so I made another run upstairs so they wouldn’t be without them that first night. The toe of my shoe caught the top step, and I tumbled onto the oak floor.

Back in the family room, I stopped to gulp for air. “Cody, Darren, let’s get your jackets, we’re going for a ride.”

I drove the several miles of curves at dusk, watching leaves flutter off trees like fairies on the wind. My temples throbbed. I looked at the boy’s unconcerned faces and my nervousness eased. Until then, I had not told anyone about my plans.

We pulled into the apartment parking lot to ample spaces. I turned off the ignition. I had made it, away from my husband. I got out with the boys and stepped away from the car. The relief I felt to leave him felt as if I had grown an eight-foot wingspan and a thermal updraft soared my spirit over a crisp Alaskan glacier. Spinning around, I gleefully waved my arms and broke the silence.

“I’m free. I’m free,” I shouted. “Freeeee.”

"The Bluebird House" by Rae Ellen Lee

I open my eyes to a gray wool hat and a face so near I see individual wiry hairs in his brushy, walrus mustache.  I close my eyes and groan.  My teeth rattle against each other.  “Moose . . . help.”

   “Hold on.  I never found a half-dead person before.  Gotta get you into the truck.” 

   Curled in the fetal position on the seat of an old pickup truck, I am wrapped in a dirty blue blanket smelling of stale beer.  The pain, like knives, stabs at me, over and over and over.  My head rests against the man’s thigh that smells of oil and sawdust.  My feet bump against the door handle.  During the few moments I am conscious, the truck rattles and shakes and hammers the bumpy, icy road.  I doze and, moaning, wake up to the engine roaring in my ears.  Soon, white snowy silence.  Then I hear a growling rumble as the man shifts down, and the jarring clatter of loose tools and beer cans on the floor.  Am I worse off now than when I lay in the woods? 

"Sweet Farm of Mine" by Candace A. Hennekens

I put the roast in, with two or three bay leaves, onions, potatoes scrubbed and quartered, probably red ones while they last, Kennebec when the reds have run out, carrots cleaned with a brush and quartered and shortened to lay between the cracks, maybe a little celery overall, seasoning of salt and pepper, a few garlic cloves nestled in the tiny spaces between the roast and the vegetables, and the meal slowly cooks while we are outside working up a hunger.  Later I’ll add to the oven dinner, maybe an apple crisp, or baked apples topped with a dab of sweet butter, a generous pinch of brown sugar, maybe some raisins.  When we walk indoors after hard work out in the open air, the smells are those of a rich, layered, mouth-watering mixture of meat, vegetables, and fruit, a meal that no fine restaurant can come close to matching when hunger is sharp and present.  Hunger, real hunger, makes any meal a gourmet meal.

"The Great Firewall" by Michael C. Boxall

A ruthless property developer is trying to drive the last resisting residents out of their home...

As Daniel arrived at the end of the lane the door swung open, then half-closed again, flames licking along its edge. He saw a figure in the doorway, silhouetted against the conflagration. Fugen Pan’s hair was on fire and he was beating at his head with his hands. There was a crash and a blazing beam fell behind him. Pushing it away with his elbow, he stumbled back inside.

Figures raced across the floor of the crater, carrying a ladder between them like a stretcher.

Pan reappeared, half-dragging, half-carrying a large bundle wrapped in cloth. The lower part was in flames and he flailed at them with one hand.

The rescuers reached the column and upended the ladder. One of them was already scrambling up. As he got to the top a hand reached from the bundle and tried to touch Pan’s face. Pan leaned forward. Then the roof fell in, burying the teacher and his mother in an avalanche of tiles and blazing timber.

The fire sent a shower of sparks up into the night sky and roared in triumph. 

"The Tourist Trail" by John Yunker

In darkness, Angela ascended the winding gravel road. She carried a flashlight, but she kept it off. She knew the path well.

       The Clouds of Magellan illuminated the white bellies of penguins crossing up ahead. Most stood at the side of the road and watched her pass, their heads waving from side to side. When one brayed, the high-pitched hee-hawing of a donkey, the others responded in kind, forming a gantlet of noise. It was mating season at Punta Verde, and the males were rowdy.

"Wild Blue Yonder" by Jack B. Rochester

Herman, Dieter and Thomas were a lot like us, except they were students at Heidelberg University. We said we were GIs and were ashamed of it, but they treated us just like any other kids our age and asked us why we were here in Germany.

“We’re total misfits,” said Tony. “We don’t fit into America because we’re hippies. We don’t fit in the military because we hate war and challenge authority. We don’t fit into European life because we’re Americans. And we don’t speak your language. If we don’t know who we are, how can we tell you why we’re here?” 

Thomas asked, “What are you looking for?”

 “A way not to think about being in the fuckin’ Air Force,” said Henry.

“Yeah,” said Tim, “but for me, I don’t want others to tell me what is truth.”

“You have your own truth?” Herman asked.

“I’m workin’ on it,” Tim said.

“Well, we’re all workin’ on it best as we can, aren’t we?” Tony said. “Maybe there isn’t a single truth, you know?”

“How about you guys?” asked Henry.

“Ja, we have found the truth,” said Thomas. “It is to know that there is no truth.”

From "Ask Me if I'm Happy" by Kimberly Menozzi

Emily and Davide chat about the fact he noticed her on the train that morning, before he stepped in to help fix her botched travel plans.

“You could see which article I was reading?”

“Sì.”

“You’d read it, too?”

“Sì, sì. Many times, in fact.”

“Imagine that… I would never have guessed something like that would catch your attention.” A wave of relief washed over her, now that the mystery of his “attraction” was solved. “You know, I thought the article was very interesting, but I’m not sure I completely understood it. My Italian isn’t perfect and there were some rather abstract concepts and complex language in it…” She trailed off, a realization dawning. “Oh, lord… ‘Davide Magnani’.” She put her hand to her forehead, embarrassed. “You wrote it, didn’t you? That’s why your name rang a little bell in the deep, dark recesses of my mind.”

“Sì, I did. It’s just that other thing I do when I’m not teaching or speaking to educational conferences in Padova…”

“Amazing… I mean, what are the odds of reading an article and having the author sitting right across from you on the train like some average Joe? Or, in this case, like some average Giuseppe?”

He chuckled. “I would think that the odds are probably quite small.”

From "Honor & Entropy" by Arthur Spevak

Arthur Spevak is meeting Telly Brensen for the first time. They are both in junior high school...

  Telly came around the corner and shook my hand.

   We were the same age, but a strength flowed through Telly’s hand that said he was endowed with things I would never have. His jaw was square and strong, and the oil in his hair did not diminish his well-set features.  

   

   “Come on to my room. I’ll show you around.” 

   I thought it odd that going to his room meant “showing me around,” but I followed, already guessing we would go to whatever was farthest from the kitchen. That’s when I got a view of his back pocket and a switchblade. 

   Suddenly, I could see him posing on the cover of Hoodlum Quarterly, surrounded by all those splashy leads...Inside: Benny “Three Fingers” Salmonelli’s award-winning Blackjack Comparison Test...The Controversy Continues – Long Blade Or Short?...Bailbondsmen – Getting Your Money’s Worth…and our feature article on prison defense: Buggered If You Don’t.

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From "The Vagabond King" by James Conway

Like some impassioned conquistador, driven mad from the heat and humidity of the deepest jungle, I slashed my way through the vines and undergrowth and longed to lay siege to her city, that legendary city of gold that all boys my age know must exist. For, behind the walls of that city, was a secret garden where nightingales sang, fountains laughed beneath the stars and plump, pendulous fruits strained at the bending branches of trees. And, enclosed behind the high walls of her most secret garden, grew the rarest of flowers which opened its velvet petals and unfolded its musty fragrance beneath the yellow moon.

From "Very Narrow Bridge" by Hillel F. Damron

The jaded detective, Gideon, and his young client, Joy, are resting in the aftermath of their battle of the sexes:

 

The reason for that eluded him. And yet, he was pleased with himself, his breathing getting invtune with hers. For once in his life, so unlike what had happened with Alma last night – and maybe, come to think of it, because of it – he was able to stare down temptation and come out on top. A winner for a change. Even if it was only one battle; even if the war, where the odds were clearly in her favor, was yet to be fought and won. Even if this seductive creature, lying here beside him, was holding him hostage. Preventing him from falling asleep. Forcing him to do some hard thinking, and to realize that the ease with which she had located her birth mother; a stroke of genius on his part, or maybe just pure luck, a one in a million shot, was not necessarily a good sign for the future. He suspected that some complications – latent energy, like the girl asleep now in his arms, so innocently and yet so ominously – may still lie ahead for her, and for him, down the road.  

From "Breaking Out" by Bob Brink

The protagonist is in a sanitarium in the mid 1950s and due to receive another shock treatment the next morning...

For the first time in the ten days he'd been at Woodside, he couldn't get to sleep. He imagined what he looked like during the ECTs as the electricity made him shake uncontrollably and bite hard on the piece of wood. He was frightened. Gloria had been doing something with the oxygen tank when he woke up the last time. Did they have to use it on him? And what if they had to and it didn't work? Could a person get epilepsy from the treatments? Was this good for his brains? Didn't people who got hit by lightning sometimes have brain damage? Yes, but lightning was a lot more powerful than these ECTs. Still, why wouldn't they at least cause a little damage? And it would add up with each one. What if something went wrong with the machine and too much electricity went into his brain and it killed him? Holy Moses! Yeah, what if something went wrong? Or what if all that convulsing caused him to have a heart attack? Had it ever happened? Had anybody ever been killed?

Britt was becoming panicky. He had to know the answers to these questions. He got up and switched on the light.

From "I Can Touch the Walls" a story in "Cracks in the Ceiling" by Dave Cornford

The opening of I Can Touch the Walls, one of the short stories in Cracks in the Ceiling by Dave Cornford...

 

The shadow of the window and the bars is climbing up the wall. I've turned the light off so I can watch it. The edge of the shadow has gone soft while the sun struggles futilely against its nightly captivity. 

I'm keeping perfectly still, so there's no momentum in the room. The swirls and eddies in the air are unwinding, allowing tranquillity to settle. It seems to increase the volume of the space ten-fold.

Distant sounds speak of the lives others are living. The screech of tyres must be some p-plate fool going out for another night of Russian roulette on the road. I can almost hear his mum at prayer. She should probably arrange a malfunction of the Grand Theft Auto game disc, just to be sure.

It's colder now. Lovely. A comforting shiver glances through my shoulders. The walls didn't absorb the heat of the day, and they're close enough to draw heat out of my face. Only old solid walls can do this for you; the brick veneer of the suburbs can't provide this type of comfort when it's needed.

From "Charlinder's Walk" by Alyson Miers

Charlinder, a resident of the post-Plague village of Paleola, tells his uncle, Roy, about his plan to investigate the end of the previously known world...

 “I want to go to Italy,” he shared. Maybe it was the early hour, or the comfort of knowing what he needed to do.

Roy blinked, his face otherwise blank, his movement arrested. He looked the way Charlinder had felt when Robert had asked to speak to his students.

“To research the Plague where it started,” he explained before his uncle could ask.

“Right,” said Roy. “How are you going to get there?”

“I’m gonna walk.”

“You can’t walk across an ocean.”

“I mean, I’d go west. Then I’d just need a boat to get across the Bering Strait, and from there it’s all land.”

“Do you have any idea how long it would take just to get that far?”

“I know I’m looking at a long time, but it’ll be worth the trouble in the end.”

“When did you get this idea?”

“Last night, it came to me.”

“How about what you’d eat? Where you’d sleep? How you’d stay on course? What you’d wear in the cold? Did that come to you last night?”

“I’m working on all that.”

“Really.”

“Yes! This question needs an answer, and I’m gonna bring it home.”

From "Book of Mercy by Sherry Roberts

Mercy Study Club weeds out "undesirable" literature from the school library...

“The Stupids Step Out,” Irene said. “Describes families in a derogatory manner and might encourage children to disobey their parents.”

Arabella huffed in disgust. “That’s an absurd name for a family, fictional or otherwise. What if Tolstoy had called her Anna Idiot instead of Anna Karenina?”

Arabella got no argument from Irene, who constantly fought the battle for eloquent language with her own children. She thought “suck” should be something you did with a straw, not a description of your homework.

“Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. One California library gave students copies of the book with all the ‘hells’ and ‘damns’, pardon my French, blacked out.”

“Not a bad idea, if you ask me,” said one member.

“I agree,” Irene said then went on to the next book. “A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein.
Encourages children to break dishes so they won’t have to dry them . . .”

Julie cleared her throat and attempted a half-hearted smile. “Irene, surely when you were a child, you too hated doing the dishes.”

Irene peered over her glasses at Julie. “We had a maid for that. Even so, there is never an excuse to take a hammer to the Wedgewood.”

From "The Vagabond King" by James Conway

The morning after my mother’s death, I was surprised to see the sunrise. From behind the curtain of my bedroom window I was surprised to see the people leave their homes and begin the day. Downstairs, the hands of the grandfather clock continued to tick, marking each passing hour with a chime that echoed over the black and white chessboard tiles of the front hall. I was surprised to see the mail come at the same time as the day before and, later that evening, the sun set once more as it did since the beginning of time. My mother’s death did not disturb the planets in their courses. And, though everything kept moving like she never existed at all, my world erupted into chaos until the universe swirled around me like a whirlpool of scattering stars.

From "Charity" by Sarah Rae

Scott didn’t speak. Didn’t blink. He sat on the rocking chair of his porch. Swung slight and slow. He stared. Watching Henry on his porch put stolen beer into an ice chest. Scott wasn’t tired, hungry, thirsty, or even sad. He fought a fury of red matter in his temporal lobe.

“In bout two hours you gone wish you had yaself some beer, too, boy. I don’t know how yous spectin to get to sleep tonight.” Henry chuckled and pulled himself up with a sigh. Pains in his left heel made it hard to even sit down. Ivory’s diagnosis was a bone spur in his heel, telling him time and again to get it checked. But Ivory was out in Mississippi and she couldn’t see him limping now. The next time he was able to get a phone call out to her he wasn’t going to tell her how much worse the pain had gotten.

“Goddam, son. Whatchu starin at?” Henry yelled across the driveway that divided their homes.

Atop a car, half a block away, a dog was floating their way.