He would have said, sometimes it’s not about the truth. Sometimes it’s about kindness. Especially when it comes to family.

Flunking a driver’s test, frightening a bully, grown up at fourteen

But he’s not getting caught on this trip, he says. He’s packing his stash wrapped in tinfoil, sprayed with deer urine, and taped to the inside of his engine, as per a YouTube tutorial.

The Crandells participated in 4-H the way we did everything: bargain hunting, doing odd jobs, and keeping costs and desires to a minimum.

I lie on the couch in the living room and feel a deep sense of shame, because I’ve increased our debt by getting sick.

This man could have been my rapist, but he looked too nice. He had thick, wavy hair, like a movie star from the seventies, and a jawbone that could take out your eye. I hung my feet over the edge of the roof and let myself slide into his arms.

When my brother was twelve, I found six mice nailed to the wall of the abandoned tree house in the woods near our apartment. He spent a lot of time there. It seemed to me the little mouse faces were frozen in agony. As though they’d been alive when he’d hammered the nails through them.

My sister Nell and I were standing on the banks of the Duvallis River, waiting for a man to float down it.