By David Gordon
They say there are no coincidences, that nothing in this world truly happens by accident. So perhaps, deep down, I really meant to show my penis to my entire class. After all, that one seeming mistake began the adventure that changed my life.
Or maybe I just suck at computers. I only intended to [...]

By Teddy Wayne
That night my dad flipped aimlessly through the network channels, something he never does.  The TV’s usually just stuck on PBS.  We happened upon a news entertainment show.  A woman’s pleasant voice said, “Celebrating birthdays on December twenty-second are Ralph Fiennes, who turns thirty-six today; Diane Sawyer, fifty-three; and the Bee Gees’ twin [...]

By Teddy Wayne
Trevor came over Friday night for Vietnamese.  He chewed up beef tips and greasy spring rolls without putting his napkin on his lap, passed gas silently without my mother’s noticing, howled at his own jokes, and when she said something amusing, stone-facedly responded, “That’s so funny.”  She picked at her steamed vegetables, no [...]

By Teddy Wayne
My parents started fighting when I was five.  Or maybe I just became aware of it around then, began identifying the high-frequency notes of hostility in adult voices.  We quickly established a vicious triangle.  I would hear bickering behind what they thought was a closed door, would nudge my way into the room, [...]

By Teddy Wayne
My dad started dating Karen, the Jack Russell’s mother.  They watched foreign films at the Angelika and dined at hole-in-the-walls in the outer boroughs, satisfying my dad’s twin loves of multiculturalism and thriftiness.  I think she was slightly allergic to me, because whenever she was around her eyes were rheumy, though she never [...]

By Teddy Wayne
As I predicted, we didn’t spend much time together that week.  He’d walk me in the morning, again when he got home from school, and once more before bed, all jaunts to the corner and back.  When he was home I’d lie down next to his desk while he prepared lesson plans and [...]

By Darin Strauss
Mack, a depressive New Yorker staring down 30, moves to Turkey after a great date with a woman visiting America from Istanbul. But his obsessive and depressive instincts return when he and Deniz overhear an argument at a restaurant, and disagree about what it means.

By Elizabeth Crane
Shane Mipod never imagined his memoir, a graphic novel called “Amen,” would land him a visiting professorship at a university. But if he had, he also wouldn’t have imagined that he’d be completely misunderstood by those who claimed to like his work the most.

By Joshua Henkin
It was 1974 and everyone was sure about something — Watergate, Vietnam, that Hank should follow his parents and grandparents to Harvard. But if Hank’s parents could get divorced, Hank, too, could make decisions for himself.

By Edward Schwarzschild
Claude was filled with regrets over the choices he made and how he raised his son after his wife died young. But when his son’s wife became pregnant with his first grandchild, would he make all the same mistakes again?

By Dallas Hudgens
Detroit snow had grounded the flight; tiny flakes pouring like rain in the glow of the tarmac lights.  Pegi watched from her window seat, annoyed by the droning breaths of the woman sleeping behind her.  The noise was insistent, and she understood what it meant to tell her.  She should be studying the [...]

By Stephen Elliott
He wanted to attend his sister’s wedding. Really. Sort of. And then he got there.

By Alix Ohlin
Janet didn’t take Adam seriously in college — he was an artist, and she was headed to the corporate world — and it broke his heart. Years later, she was divorced and working as a consultant, and Adam was playing Williamsburg dive bars and working a job he didn’t care about. Guess whose company hired Janet to suggest “efficiencies”?

By Paul Griner

Bumping slowly up the dirt driveway toward Clare’s house, dust swirling behind him into the blue air despite his caution, Buddy knew what Clare would say as soon as he got out of the car.
“You’re late, Buddy, fifty minutes late.” She would say his name like that, italicized, as if having to pronounce [...]

By Rebecca Curtis
The Witches were a dangerous place to take a boat, an even riskier place to swim, and not the best destination for a post-prom sail.

By Jennifer S. Davis

Cecilia was riddled with cancer, didn’t have much longer to live, and knew her husband was having an affair with Rose. What Rose couldn’t understand was why Cecilia asked her to the house one afternoon before Christmas.

By Jess Row
She had been warned not to behave this way in Bangkok. Not to pull the Lonely Planet guide out at the train station. Certainly not to go home with a strange man. But even when she disregarded those warnings, she never would have believed it was possible to fall into a situation as dangerous as this.