Vacation
Head to Florida: 24 hours. Mom and her sisters scheduled Grandpa’s funeral a month out. Booked a redeye. Flight delays at noon; again at three; wait long as I can bear. Get on a bus, then get told to take another bus. Go up the wrong escalator. TSA pulls twelve bags in front of me. Conveyor belt backs up, no room to move my bag through the X-ray. Head to the terminal. Stop for a water bottle—$7.99. Read a book. Flight delays. Flight delays again—now the connection is ruined. Won’t make the funeral. Cancel the flight. Wait to talk to the airline rep. Fill out a refund form. Return trip on the bus: a family gets on at the international terminal. They stand in the aisle. Bus rocks and sways, starts and stops. Feel regret for missing the flight. Bus u-turns at economy parking. Family’s son bends his neck, projectile vomits all over a stranger’s luggage. Rush past them and back to my truck, careful to step over the thick liquid.
No. 135
Manhunt
The helicopter swooped low in the sky, then banked, rose slightly, and hovered above the high school. Cop cars already blocked the roads, southbound and eastbound. A group of teenagers mingled on the grass between them, arriving too late to get to class. An hour before, two students raced down Olympic, swerving in and out of lanes. Screeching to a stop in front of the school, one of them pulled a gun and chased the others onto the campus. When they arrived, the officers began combing the schoolyard for the hidden students.
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Over a bullhorn a cop instructed a man to drop his weapon. He had attempted robbery of a fast food restaurant, but companies don’t leave as much cash anymore, and the managers that had the keys to the safe were not on shift. He ran out to the road as the police rounded the corner. He placed the gun in his waistband and slid down an alley between apartment buildings as the whirring blades of a helicopter appeared overhead. The searchlight illuminated the dark alley as he removed the gun from his waistband and let it fall to the concrete.
No. 091