• Rome

    I always hated when my parents told me “Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know.” Clearly. All I wanted was to be able to live my life without them hovering over my shoulder with every decision I made. All I wanted to do was to go on a vacation by myself. All I wanted…

  • The Chef

    PHOTO PROMPT © Liz Young  I had always loved cooking elaborate meals when I had friends over, but when it came to feeding myself, I never wanted to cook. Only simple salads and fruit would do for me. The day I met Gabriel, everything changed. I couldn’t pinpoint the moment I changed, but something had.…

  • The Donation

    When the donation first came through, I immediately started crying. I had never needed help more than I needed it right now.  I had never asked for money before, for help before, but my situation was dire.  Everything had started when Mario smashed my car into a tree. He wasn’t supposed to be driving, but…

  • The School Trip

    As soon as I woke up, I knew the day was going to go haywire. I always hated going on school field trips because no one else wanted to see the same things I wanted to see. Today I would be heading to the science museum with the rest of my fourth-grade class and I…

  • The Dishwasher

    The dishwasher had been broken for months before anyone noticed. I didn’t want to tell my family because I knew what they would do. I knew I would have to pay for the damage even though I hadn’t been the one to break the dishwasher. I was the scapegoat – the black sheep – of…

  • Short End of the Stick

    I always knew I had the short end of the stick being that I had two older brothers.  I wanted to be with them for every hour of every day.  I wanted to do everything they did and sometimes they let me and sometimes they didn’t.  My parents obliged my fantasies of playing flag football,…

  • Square One

    “Square one? We’re really back to square one? How could we possibly be back here? We’ve been working on this for weeks!!” I knew my voice was getting hysterical, but I couldn’t help it.  “Listen. I don’t know what you want me to say, but our plan isn’t going to work. Riley has figured out…

  • School Days

    I never knew how good my life was until everything was gone. Everything changed the day I turned eighteen just like my family had been warning. What they did not do was warn me about what was going to happen on the day I turned eighteen. If they had, I would have been significantly more…

  • The Sting

    I never knew what to do with an aching heart. My parents had never expressed their feelings openly and I wondered what it would be like to be able to talk about anything and everything. I wanted to scream and dance and not worry about what they would say. How they would act. Would they…

  • The Ranch

    As soon as Clayton grabbed my hand, I knew what I had to do. I needed to run and run fast. Clayton should be able to keep up and I knew I couldn’t waste breath and time waiting for him. If Marcus caught up with us, it’d all be over.  Clayton and I had come…