The Lovely Bones

How’s your investigation coming?”

wielding shovels and rakes

It was a hard sock in the stomach.

reached out his hand

swatting the roaches

“People grow up by living,” I said to Franny. “I want to live.”

Life is a perpetual yesterday for us.

Life is a perpetual yesterday for us.

Inside the snow globe on my father’s desk, there was a penguin wearing a red-and-white-striped scarf. When I was little my father would pull me into his lap and reach for the snow globe. He would turn it over, letting all the snow collect on the top, then quickly invert it. The two of us watched the snow fall gently around the penguin. The penguin was alone in there, I thought, and I worried for him. When I told my father this, he said, “Don’t worry, Susie; he has a nice life. He’s trapped in a perfect world.”

good at acing a science quiz,