On a summer evening in August, Laura sat cross-legged on the concrete floor of the teepee-shaped rec center. The air was heavy and warm inside.

Born weeks apart, Julep and Ellis were playmates from the start and had been classmates through 10th grade.

It had been a week since I'd last left the house. I'd barely made it back last time.

Ensconced in bed reading his history textbook, Delphus McManus was startled when the phone rang.

A lone sedan entered the parking lot of the processing plant and went dark. A tenebrous figure emerged from the shadows, sheathed in tactical garb and gripping an M-4 carbine. He loaded a magazine and charged the weapon.

Crib Goch is the hardest route up Snowden, it’s classed as a grade one scramble, which means that you can’t, or shouldn’t, do it in weekend sneakers, although I’ve seen worse.

Emma nervously entered the classroom and found an empty desk while she felt the burning power of a hundred sets of eyes staring. She expected the teasing and giggles, but she didn’t expect silence.

I had known Bill for five years but had never seen him outside the office. “Don’t you find that strange?” Annie asked me one evening.

I would be staring past the characters at the painted background. Faraway hills and tall summer trees against a wide horizon. What was there?

“Three years,” I tell her, “Three years since I saw you in the courtroom, lying to save your husband. Perjuring yourself and destroying our case.”

Once there was a man named Frederick Alarcy who lived and died. He left a widow and two strong sons, and they lived through their grief on the slopes of Broken Pine Tor

Perhaps I even saw it as a foretaste of things to come: the hopefully not-too-distant days when my destiny would be fulfilled, and I’d be a key inhabitant, one of the new history makers.

Was this the reason his store had seen such a sudden decline in sales? And if so, what was so special about this new wave of bobbleheads?

"Once more," I said. "Once more. I'll try one more time. Then I'm going to find a job delivering FedEx packages or do yard work: something that can be done and I can see a result right then!"

Grandma Mason had taken guardianship of Joey after his parents perished in an unspeakable tragedy earlier that year. Joey had been devastated by the loss of his parents and came to rely heavily on his grandma.