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Now, as an adult, your character looks back on this summer as the summer when they grew up.

Posted in Character on Sep 1, 2023

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✍️ 40 stories

The Rules for Crying

Submitted to Contest #214

She walks through the room in silence, yet she’s never silent. There is a liveliness to her, a lightening of the room, a lifting of the spirit that stays long after she’s gone. Madison is almost perfect. Unfortunately, she has bad taste in men; she married me. She likes that joke less than I do but she smiles and kisses me anyway. “Why is there a bottle of champagne on the table?” I ask this merely for information. I admit that Maddie sees more than I do. Always has. The champagne on the table is evidence that whatever is going to happen to...

30 likes 34 comments 34
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Crazy Cate

Submitted to Contest #214

I never asked to be paired with Cate. The community center randomly threw us together with no apparent reasoning, other than we were around the same age. When my mom suggested I get a job with the Township that summer, I groaned and watched my days of reading outside in the grass under a tree evaporate like a puddle on a sunny day. “You’ll have plenty of time to read and be lazy until school starts again. I think you’ll like it,” she prodded. “Fine. I’ll apply, but if I DON’T get it, I can’t say I’ll be sorry,” I told her as I...

21 likes 26 comments 26
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Dixon Street

Submitted to Contest #214

If it was a Wednesday, we’d get pizza after midnight. Grandpa Ed would wake me up from my spot on the couch. The television would be playing reruns of a show from the 1950’s about a talking cat or a horse that solves crime. The black and white would cross my face, and I’d fear for a moment that the world had lost its color. Then, warmth. I’d be scooped up into arms that smelled like tweed and Aramis. I’d pretend to still be asleep, but I don’t know why. I don’t know why that was my favorite thing to do. Fight going to bed only to continue ...

20 likes 14 comments 14
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A Train to Nowhere

Submitted to Contest #214

Wednesday, July 3, 2002The summer of 2002 started like this: an eighteen-year-old boy on a Kawasaki Ninja motorbike rocketed down 14th Avenue at about sixty miles an hour, popping a wheely, right as a girl with a white Jeep backed out into the middle of the intersection without looking.We were sitting on the porch at 14th and A in Belmar, NJ drinking SoCo & Limes on the rocks when it happened.When the motorcycle was suddenly stopped by the white Jeep, the boy riding it was not. We watched him sail through the air like a punted footb...

16 likes 13 comments 13
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The Summer I Grew Up

Submitted to Contest #214

The summer I grew up was not a happy one. How could it be otherwise? It’s suffering and pain that transform us, not contentment and pleasure, however alluring and attractive they seem. At some point, the nursery and all its soothing safety and warmth have to be ripped away, and the child has to stare at the cold, hard, unfeeling facts of life with no one to comfort her.For me, in that sweltering summer of my late youth, the cold, hard, unfeeling facts of life consisted of a white funeral hall, a silver and sable coffin, and my mother’s corps...

14 likes 2 comments 2
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Natal Day

Submitted to Contest #214

Trigger warning: death of a child.The road by our house was sand-sealed, not paved. It would heave and tilt every spring, shedding gravel and tar clumps for the graders, men, and dump trucks to set right again.The kids in our neighborhood were friendly enough, and when we weren’t in our backyards, the road was our playground. We played Red Rover until too many scraped knees made tearing up and tossing frisbee-shaped chunks of sand-seal more fun. We never got in trouble for that.Trouble unlike any we had ever known before started on a sunny S...

13 likes 5 comments 5
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The Recruiter

Submitted to Contest #214

I grab the watering hose and give a low, whispered shout to my daughter to turnthe faucet on full blast. I hear water, burbling, and gurgling, wending its waytoward me, emitting the random expulsion of trapped air, and after a flex ofthe hose, water begins to spray from the attached nozzle. I take care tospray the grass around the fire pit area. I had already carefully poured dirtand sand onto the embers of that night’s campfire. I turn the nozzle on thehose to the “rain shower” setting and soak the area around the old fire pituntil my ...

11 likes 8 comments 8
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Brother

Submitted to Contest #214

Everyone who knew the retired bachelor in Apartment 2E always said he would have made a perfect husband and father. Trent Eden knew better. He would thank his neighbors, smile sheepishly, and tell them about the life-changing summer he spent with Brother Monroe.              Affable and inquisitive, Brother spoke four languages, could play classical music note-perfect on piano or cello, and had an I.Q. of 130. And yes, there was also that prophetic first name.The most amaz...

11 likes 7 comments 7
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H.A.R.P

Submitted to Contest #214

H.A.R.P Human Adaptive Recreation Project “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race ... .It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.” — Stephen Hawking “It is day 1,859 of my testing for the human effects of the algorithm  that has been placed into my new human cerebellum, commonly referred to among humans as gray matter or the brain. I also would like to inf...

10 likes 0 comments 0
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I'm a Big Girl Now!

Submitted to Contest #214

I'm a Big Girl now! Every school year ends on my birthday or the day after…June 5th or the 6th. Tomorrow morning, I finally have to change buses to get to my new school. I also got to pick all my outfits for the semester, even my footwear choices—no more baby clothes, uniforms, and penny loafers. I get to carry a backpack and gym bag instead of a lunch box and a book bag. I have decided that quick-change outfits are appropriate on gym days, so bib overall or one-piece dresses and tennis shoes. There should be nothing that I will need extra ...

10 likes 5 comments 5
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Through The Mirror Brightly

Submitted to Contest #214

We are all made of stars. We really are, all of us are made from the same stuff as stars and that makes us truly remarkable. Each and every one of us. Our value is incalculable. We are priceless. It was only when I grew up, that I learned this. I grew up, and in growing up, I knew a great many things. Things that we should all know, if only we would see. Of course, as I began to open up and use my mind, I realised that I had not previously known as much as I thought I had. We build walls around ourselves and paint them as thoug...

9 likes 2 comments 2
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That Summer

Submitted to Contest #214

I ran through the park, laughing with my friends. The summer would last forever, our innocence retained. How stupid we were. Darkness came. Street lights glowed. Villains rose. Parents came. They found my friend's bodies. They never found me. Morning bell rings and I force myself out of bed. My empty dreams fade away in the light of the rising sun. I start my morning routine: get dressed, knife throwing, breakfast, work-out, brush teeth, polishing gear. The second bell rings and hundreds of "recruits" like me file out of rooms ...

8 likes 2 comments 2
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That Summer We Ate Watermelon on the Peak of Da Sia Shan

Submitted to Contest #214

In contrast to the cool and refreshing air of San Francisco, which made exercise light, the humid, sub-tropical heat of Dan Sia weighed on Sue like a wet blanket. Her breathing was laborious and her steps felt heavy, as she made her way up the steep steps leading to the distant summit. Wen taunted her slow pace from above. Although he was already in his fifties, her younger brother never missed an opportunity to tease her. He recalled nostalgically of the days he sprinted up the mountain in thirty minutes with a larg...

8 likes 2 comments 2
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Summertime Supernova

Submitted to Contest #214

CW: This story contains themes of substance abuse, domestic violence, and graphic imagery I don’t think that many people can say they’ve ever seen a supernova. In fact, it can be observed that nobody could ever say that they’ve seen such an interstellar occurrence. There are only a select few who are the exception to this observation: one of them is astronomer Tycho Brahe, who recorded Tycho’s Supernova in 1572. Another exception would be Johannes Kepler, who recorded Kepler’s Supernova in 1604. And another exception would be me. I’ve seen...

8 likes 0 comments 0
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The Brave

Submitted to Contest #214

       Indian summer always turns my thoughts to my father. All men have a season; his was late summer; the days often blistering hot but the nights turning cool and promising the relief of autumn. I remember the hay bales and corn husks starting to tower in the green fields. I remember cookout smoke, pop-tops sssshing open, and the deep laughter of men.              Most of all, though, I remember my father, quietly brooding am...

8 likes 0 comments 0
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