There are some things in life that should remain forever private; chief among them are the thoughts in my head. Not because they are sacred or profound, but because they are ridiculous. For instance, I don’t know why I even bother to set my alarm clock. Well, actually I do know, but it is not as simple as, “I have to get up in the morning.” No, for me, it is a much more complex, existential ritual that I perform on a daily basis. It is a test of my strength, my will, and my determination; because I know full well that I will be wide awake, long before that annoying alarm has had a chance to disturb my slumber. For me, it is literally a ‘race against time’. “Take that!! You inanimate timekeeper, masquerading as a radio! You can take all of your traffic reports, news updates, golden oldies, and drive time banter and shove it!! You’re not going to catch this boy napping. Oh no! You’re going to have to get up pretty early in the morning to beat this guy.” Yeah, so what if I’m in a constant state of exhaustion. It’s good to start every day with a victory.
 
And so it was on this Tuesday morning that my eyes snapped open to catch that relentless blinking beast at precisely 6:17 A.M. Before it had a chance to strike, I quickly disarmed it by flipping the switch to the “off” position. Victory was mine. I had beaten the beast by a full thirteen minutes.
 
I decided to let Anna sleep until the last possible moment. I guess that is the difference between fathers and daughters…between adults and children. She does not have to worry about tomorrow, radio alarms, or even if it’s Tuesday. That is my job. Anna is fully present; here and now. As she sleeps and as she dreams, she knows that even her nightmares will be softened by me. “Daddy, I had a bad dream. I was falling real fast…” In her sleep, as in her waking, she knows that I will catch her.
 
Today is a particularly busy day for us. It is Anna’s first day of camp. There are showers to be taken, hair to, not only be washed, but combed, lunches to be made, backpacks to be packed, and every item and garment to be personally tagged with Anna’s very own name. I’ve even been instructed to stick a nametag on Anna, herself. Make no mistake; this is a day camp where there will be no identity crises.
 
Picking out Anna’s wardrobe seem to go on forever; shorts, tops, bathing suits, socks, underwear, cruise wear, après swim wear, all of which had to be tagged. But that was nothing compared to the assembly of her lunch. I stood in the kitchen awash in a sea of decisions. This was no ordinary lunch. This was more than a sandwich. This was more than mere sustenance. This was a ‘nutritional statement’…of who we are and what we are about. This was a testament to single fatherhood. Would this lunch be coveted by hundreds of other yet unknown fellow campers? Would Anna be able to trade up for some other snacks? Would she emerge victorious in her first ‘power lunch’? The clock was ticking. I had to take action. What sort of lunchmeat? Whole wheat or rye? And what about mayonnaise? And if I did indeed choose to go with mayo, do I cover both the northern and southern exposures of the interior of her sandwich? Wait. Maybe lunchmeat is wrong. What if she encounters some judgmental vegans? However, when it came to the ultimate decision, crust or no crust, my course was clear. Anna is seven years old. She’s not a baby anymore. Let her eat crust! Hey, I know that sounds harsh, but we can’t coddle these kids forever.
 
I could delay no longer. I had to roust ‘her highness’. The hour was getting late and there would be no time for negotiations. The camp bus would be there and she had to be on it, for there were hundreds of other little nouveau campers with their families living out these very same morning maneuvers. (Although, I’m fairly certain, they weren’t as conflicted as I was about the mayo.) And they too would have to be in place, ready and waiting for the arrival of the big yellow bus.
 
“Anna, time to get up.” Who was I kidding? We both knew that this was only a warning shot. It wouldn’t be until the third or fourth wake-up call that Anna would even deign to stir. “Come on Anna, we’re gonna be late!!” I’ll bet at that moment she wished she could disarm me like my old faithful radio/alarm. I take her first audible protest as my signal to start breakfast. With breakfast on the burner, I go back to Anna. It is now 7:28. The thirteen minutes I had banked earlier was rapidly losing its value.
 
“Daddy, I don’t feel good.” Roughly translated that means. “I’m scared.” For the moment, being fed, watered, and tagged, had to be put on hold, so I could hold Anna in my arms. It’s amazing; a little love goes a long way.
 
7:52. The big yellow bus will be here in eight minutes. After a brief summit about her outfit du jour, she set about to accessorize. Accessorize?!? Thank God for those thirteen extra minutes.
 
At long last, we were ready. We gathered ourselves and went to sit on the stoop. However, our excitement quickly turned into dreaded anticipation. As our fears grew bigger our talk grew smaller, until our communication was reduced to no more than some sideward glances, and a few forced smiles, punctuated by an occasional heavy sigh. Sometimes words fail. Sometimes, the most meaningful moments can only be shared in silence.
 
Suddenly, like the sun looming large on the horizon, the big yellow bus emerged. As it hurled towards us, our pulses quickened. But this did not feel like daybreak, it felt more like heartbreak. The bus ground to a halt and the door flung open. Anna looked back at me. “Come on honey, I’ll walk you on the bus.” As we stepped onto the bus, Anna could contain herself no more. Her sadness erupted as tears flowed down her cheeks. “Please, daddy, stay with me.” And for one split second, for one brief moment, I thought to myself, “Why not?” I could just sit at the back of the bus like some overgrown retard. (I know that’s politically incorrect, but remember, these are my private thoughts.) Sure, I’d be the object of derision. The kids would make fun of me, but who cares? I would get to be with my daughter. Who would I be hurting? The only obstacle I foresaw was that none of my clothes were tagged. But wait! I’m wearing underwear that says Calvin Klein. That’s it! I could be Calvin, the overgrown retard. That’s what I thought, but that’s not what I said. I said, “Honey, I’m sorry, but I promise I’ll be waiting ‘right here’ for you when you get home.” I hugged her and kissed her warm, wet, salty little face. I waved like a madman until she and the bus were out of sight. I would have stood there all day waving if I thought it would bring her any peace or comfort. But, sad as she was, I let her go, because that too is my job. It is my job to hold her and it is my job to let her go.
 
It was a long day for me. Waiting, wondering, and worrying… These are the private thoughts in my head that are sacred.  “Anna, your love has gone through me like a bright light through a prism. Everywhere I look I see your colors.”
 
At last the hour had arrived. As promised, I stood there waiting in my appointed spot. Waiting. And waiting. The clock seemed to tick backwards. And then the first ray of light broke on the horizon. But his was no longer the big yellow bus; this was a chariot of fire bringing you back to me. And as you sprang from your chariot, running towards me, I saw that my beautiful, radiant little girl had grown in my absence.
 
“Daddy, you’ll never guess who’s in my group…”As Anna went on about her first day at camp, I thought about my daily ritual ‘race against time’, about holding her and letting her go, about waking and sleeping. I realized that Anna is mine twice…By her comings and by her goings; by her growing up and my growing old. I thought of the color yellow, that bright white light, and the dream of trying to hold on to a rainbow.
 
 Gary Koppel is a writer living in California.

Darren doesn't remember hearing the trucks, they must have come when he was super sick, with the high fever that didn't bother him much because it was amazing, feeling weightless and hovering over everything, like Iron Man.
Stephanie tells him he would nod at her without opening his eyes and say, “I am Iron Man.”
“You said that like two thousand times.” Stephanie is sitting on his bed watching him eat a Hot Pocket.
“I did not.” The Hot Pocket is too hot and he feels a piece of pepperoni burning the roof of his mouth. But it's better than the healthy stuff his mother is always bringing up to him and he shouldn't be mean to Stephanie since she was nice enough to smuggle him a Hot Pocket.
“You said, 'Whoosh,' too. It was kind of scary.”
“It was the fever.” He doesn't remember saying “Whoosh” or “I am Iron Man,” but he's sure Stephanie isn't making it up.
“Do people ever die from a high fever?”
“I don't know.”
“Suppose Mom and Dad hadn't taken you to the doctor?”
“Then I'd be dead. And you could have my room.”
Stephanie shakes her head. Darren's room is bigger than hers with a window that looks out to the second story of the house next door. “My view is better,” she says. “I hope I don't ever get mono.”
“It's not so bad. This is the worst part.” At first the novelty of having to stay upstairs in his bedroom was okay – lots of resting and watching TV and people bringing you meals on a tray. But now, a couple weeks in, it's boring. Fortnite, League of Legends, World of Warcraft, they blend together. He's binge watched “Stranger Things” so many times he can quote the dialogue along with the actors.
“It's lucky you didn't hear the trucks,” Stephanie says. “Or the noise. Mom told me the Vails demo-ed their whole master bath. At least it's done.”
He isn't sure what she's talking about. And he's tired. He could take a nap. Or watch the last season of “Stranger Things” again. Eleven is really cute. Why aren't there any girls as cute as Eleven at his high school?
Stephanie is looking out his window. “They haven't put curtains back up yet.”
Darren doesn't say anything. He's fallen asleep, the half-eaten Hot Pocket on the plate in front of him.

He thinks it's a scene from “Stranger Things” or maybe a dream, but the way things appear and disappear these days, who knows?
She's old. Not as old as his mother old, but way older than Stephanie or Eleven. He watches as she pulls her blonde hair up and over her head and twists a scrunchie around it.
He doesn't know her name. He thinks he heard his father refer to her as “Wife Three” and his mother said that wasn't very nice and they should at least learn her name and his father said, “What's the point? Wife Four is right around the corner.”
Her husband, Mr. Vail, seems nice enough. He's seriously old, grandparent-y old. Grey hair, but he's slim and fit and Darren sees him walking in the neighborhood a lot. “Keto,” he shouted out to Darren one morning and Darren waved back, not having the slightest idea what Keto meant.
Wife Three is standing in front of her bathroom window. The lights are on, but Darren's room is dark. It must be nighttime, Darren thinks, but he's never sure if it's day or night, stupid fever. He also can't remember if the Vail master bathroom used to have curtains. Or shutters. Snippets of his mother talking about the bathroom remodel come back to him, “At least $30,000 and I think they redid it five years ago, why throw away money like that?” “Yeah, who wouldn't love radiant floor heating?” “And of course they went with granite, Mrs. Vail told me it – the same granite Tina Fey used for her beach house, big deal.”
He props himself up on his pillows and notices a gigantic glass-walled shower, big enough to fit a dozen people. Darren and Stephanie used to share a bathroom until one day she told her parents it was too gross so she uses the guest room bathroom now – score for Darren because he has a bathroom to himself.
He closes his eyes and wonders if he should nap. Wife Three is pretty, he's never really noticed her before. His mother said something about how she teaches Hot Yoga, whatever that is. She's reaching for something, oh, a button on her shirt. She undoes the top button. Interesting. For a second, maybe less than a second if there's such a thing, Darren considers looking away.
Nah.
One button, two, three buttons, she allows her shirt to slip to the floor. Darren realizes he's holding his breath.
She's wearing a bra, but not like one of his sister's bras (he saw once by accident, gross!). This one is black and lacy and a little sparkly. It pushes her breasts up towards her neck. Her rather large breasts.
Breasts. Boobs. Titties.
Oh, shit. He should close his eyes. Pull the covers over his head. This has got to be some kind of sin, right?
She reaches around to her back. Her arms are strong and muscular, must be the Hot Yoga.
So what if it's a sin? Fuck it.
She's going to take off the bra.
Exhale, exhale.
It's not a sin, it's a test, like he's on a TV show. When the mono was really bad, they put hidden cameras in his room and now they're waiting to see how long it is before he says anything. All he has to do is tell the producer, “Okay, I know what you're up to. I'm not going to watch so you can turn off the cameras. Ha ha, joke's on me.”
She's biting her bottom lip. Even from a distance he can see the white of her teeth against her lip. Uh-oh, it looks like the bra is hard to take off. I could volunteer. Climb up your trellis, Wife Three, and help you remove your bra and you'll let me touch your tits as a thank you, right? Please?
The bra drops. Darren is sure he's stopped breathing. Are his lungs even working to full capacity these days? Shit, it would suck to die right now because of some kind of mono-induced lung failure.
Her breasts are glorious. Round and perfect and for some reason he thinks of volleyballs, only soft delicious flesh-colored volleyballs with round pink nipples, nipples he'd like to kiss only maybe it's the fever talking again. He closes his eyes. When he opens them again, she'll be gone. Poof.
When he opens his eyes, the bathroom is empty. Good, he thinks. Because even though it's crushingly disappointing, at least he knows it was just the fever and he's getting better. See? I can make the imaginary naked woman go away if I want. Although I should have waited a little bit longer.
She appears again, stepping into the giant shower. She turns on the water and steps out. Approaches the window. Does she know he's watching her? He sinks back into his pillows and tries to be invisible.
She's moving towards the window, closer and closer until her breasts are pressing against the glass. Round and glorious, the nipples flat. Curving, looping volleyballs, a series of circles and he remembers learning about the radius of a circle in math class, but why the fuck is he thinking about the radius of a circle right now? When she steps back, her nipples are hard and pink, pencil erasers.
Behind her, the shower is filled with steam.
He is slipping away again, he feels the feathers in his pillows begin to move, floating up towards the ceiling, and he is lost in a snowstorm of down.

He's not sure when his mother comes in to check on him. “You're burning up,” she says. “I'll get an ice pack.”
He thinks he says thank you. The feathers are back inside the pillow now, that's a good thing. The light in the bathroom next door is out, that's also a good thing.
Later he imagines hearing shouting from next door – Mr. Vail and Wife Three, now wearing a fluffy robe. “I wanted six,” he hears her say.
“Nobody needs six shower heads.” Mr. Vail's voice sounds low and hard.
“And only two hand showers.”
“You got your overhead rainfall shower.”
He sees Mr. Vail moving close to Wife Three. He's much taller than she is.
“You said you'd give me anything I wanted.”
“That was before I knew you were a greedy bitch.” Mr. Vail grabs Wife Three's wrist. Her robe opens and if he wanted to, Darren could probably see her breasts again.
But the feathers are fluttering and he pushes the cold pack against his forehead to make them go away.

When he's finally better and eating breakfast at the kitchen table, his mother asks if he's heard the trucks.
“I thought they finished the bathroom,” he says.
“They're doing it again, can you believe it? I ran into Mrs. Vail the other day and she told me. Something about the shower.”
“Mr. Vail said it was okay?”
“I don't know. We haven't seen him, he's on vacation,” his mother says. “Mrs. Vail told us he left a week ago.”
“Probably on the hunt for Wife Four,” Darren's father says, not looking up from the sports page.
“She said she's not sure when he's coming back.” His mother hands him a piece of toast. “Eat up, you look like skin and bones.”


Ann Lewis Hamilton is a writer living in California.

There's this throw rug of crushed cigarette butts back by the garbage bin, which Jenny doesn't understand because how hard is it to put your cancer stick out and take two steps and flick what’s left into the trash? Hundreds of flat cellulose cylinders with their ragged charred ends, like spent bullet casings which, musing on it as she takes another deep unpleasant drag on her last Spirit, is totally apropos.
No, she's not trying to quit. Yes, she knows it's a disgusting habit that doesn't even give her pleasure anymore.
What's your fucking point?
A dolphin grey Amazon Prime delivery van bounces down the alley, stirring up a miasma of Baltimore urban decay. The driver's rosacea and aspirational neck beard are familiar to her from all his chummy banter across the barista bar: his name is Chet, or maybe Chuck: skinny decaf butterscotch macchiato, no foam, no tip. Now he leers at her from the open side window as he drives past. Last week she complained to her manager about Chet’s relentless attempts to ask her out and got a lecture about customer primacy, a how-to on using her wit and charm to defuse uncomfortable interactions “before they start” and while doing so perhaps up-sell to the man the apricot scones that were always piling up because they arrived from the bakery rock-hard. The manager concluded with a suggestion that Jenny not wear so much make-up. And a long-sleeve shirt would cover the dueling dragons that curl down around her upper arms.
He’s an asshole, sometimes.
She smokes. Her phone chimes. Text from Jeremy. Her brother had his monthly lunch with their mom, no insight into the memory lapses. Earlier, Jenny had texted a suggestion that Jeremy call the doctor directly to find out what's going on, although she was pretty sure it wasn’t going to get them anywhere. Now Jeremy confirms it: the doctor told him if they want to know about their mother, they need to ask her.
Jenny sends a shrug emoji. Then the smiling brown pile of poo.
Texting her brother is so much better than talking to him, and this is why she invented the argument that she's been able to string out for the past three months. Its catalyst was a typical Jeremy Troon harangue on how Jenny was pissing her life away on sybaritic indulgences in childish defiance of their mother's stolid and cautious career path and their dad’s reverse-role as primary caretaker. This rapidly devolved into a shouting match in which Jenny accused her brother of feigning ADD in high school to buy more time for his SAT tests, so he could get into Johns Hopkins, something she didn't really believe but had always been jealous about because her own test anxiety had resulted in mediocre scores and, by this same theory, doomed her to the third-rate state school she dropped out of junior year. Jeremy countered with a dig about weed stealing her ambition. She insisted weed helped her anxiety and accused him of only dating sociopaths, then kicked him out and cut him off except for texting, which didn't count as real conversation but enabled her to keep tabs on him since that was one thing she had promised her father before he died.
With her mother, the communication blackout been longer than three months, and Jenny didn't need to invent anything. The last time they were together was her birthday, just the three of them. Her mother has made a point of mustering "the family" on special occasions for the past few years; she finds this super ironic, considering that they're all adults now, and that her mother missed so many important family milestones back when they were important. When they were kids. Her kids.
They were never close, never had the mother-daughter thing Jenny assumed all her friends had. The lunches, the intimate girl talks, shopping for prom dresses and sharing little secrets. Her Texas Ranger grandfather once told her, in his blunt single-syllable declarative style, that the reason she didn’t get along with her mom was because they were so much alike. “Coupla fucking warrior princesses,” he’d say.
She doesn’t believe that for a minute.
Their relationship got worse after her father died when, as irony would have it, her mother began spending more time at home. The mom phase lasted fourteen uncomfortable months and then Jeremy moved back from the dorm to be Jenny’s adult surrogate for the remainder of her high school while her their mother (who used her maiden name, of course, professionally, erasing all connection to the domestic Troons) went back out into the world of commerce and did whatever it was she did there.
On the one-year anniversary of Dennis Troon’s funeral, Jenny slipped out with her friend Rachel and got her father’s portrait tattooed on her back, left shoulder. First ink. She didn’t tell her mother, and her mother didn’t notice the bandage that covered it for the first few days. But when Jenny finally uncovered and looked at it in the mirror, she was horrified at what she saw. Although she’d given the tattoo artist her favorite photograph of her father, what she discovered on her shoulder was some sort of black and green wolverine -- not the X-man, the animal, and badly drawn at that. So badly rendered that Jenny burst into tears seeing it, and her mother had heard her and forced her way into the bathroom (how did she know how to jimmy the lock?) and thus discovered Jenny’s ugly secret.
Not that her mom was judgmental; she had offered to take her daughter to have it removed. Jenny, however, in her grief and embarrassment, insisted that she didn’t want to lose it; she wanted it fixed. Which she now knows was impossible, but all her fraught history with her mother caused her to dig in and refuse any help.
A couple years later, stoned and moody after dropping out of college, she tried to have another artist turn it into a rose. Her brother says it looks like a hallucination broccoli. And ever since, Jenny just doesn’t take her top off except when she’s alone, not even for sex, although that hasn’t ever been much of an issue. She’s told her few hookups she has a hideous scar from a childhood kitchen grease fire, and she used to hope they would think this was something her mother had done to her.
Lately, she’s just ashamed of the whole fiasco. And sometimes wishes her mom would bring it up, and offer again to go with her to have it removed. A twist of worry and guilt: maybe she doesn’t remember?
Shayda bangs out of the back door and into the alley, dragging two black plastic twist-tie trash bags and looking surprised to find Jenny already back here.
"You on break?"
Jenny takes one final drag on her cigarette, and mashes it out on the bottom of her shoe. "No. Why?”
“We’re short behind the register. And somebody just did an online order for, like, ten gazillion variations on vente mocha frozen frappe shit.” Shayda takes some scarlet lipstick from her pocket and applies it blind, like a slash, to her mouth.
Jenny flicks her cigarette butt onto the ground and helps heave the trash into the bin. One of the bags splits open on a sharp metal flange and spills half its contents back out onto the pavement.
“Dammit.”
The Amazon van rolls back up the alley, passing them, slowing to a crawl, Chet’s face in shadow, on the driver’s side away from them, but his eyes turned this way, and bright, like they’re back-lit. “Hey, ladies.”
“Ew. I know that guy.”
“Chet,” Jenny says.
“Chuck,” Shayda corrects her. “Creep cupped my butt the other day when I was restocking napkins.”
A claret tongue splits the lips of the Amazon driver and he waggles it at them, lewdly.
Something in Jenny snaps. She reaches down and picks up the first thing she can find: a stale scone sopping with milk so spoiled she nearly retches as she reels back and throws through the van’s window a perfect spitball strike that hits Chuck on the side of his head and breaks into pieces that will be hard to clean out. He howls. Jams on the brakes. Throws open his door.
“Fuck fuck fuck.”
Shayda says, “Oh Jesus,” turns and runs back inside.
Out of his vehicle, spitting, coughing, one eye clotted with viscous scone bits and half-shut, in Chuck’s hands is one of those steering wheel lock bars with which Jenny assumes he’s going to try to clobber her.
“The fuck are you doing?” he’s shouting, doing a stagger-walk around his van, clawing fetid crumbs from his collar. “The fuck do you think you fucking are?”
What Jenny thinks is she needs another weapon, and there’s an awkward length of rebar under the trash bin that, once she’s yanked it free, is way too long to be practical but for one brief breath she imagines herself lifting it and running Chuck through, like a warrior princess would.
“I’m your worst nightmare,” Jenny barks at him, because she remembers it from a movie. “I’m Chuck the Creep’s hell on Earth. A bitch with balls.”
“What’s going on here?” Dimitri, her manager, has stepped down from the back door.
“I’m pressing charges,” Chuck whines, letting the wheel lock fall to his side and starting to dig in his jacket for his phone. “Assault.” Now that she can compare Chuck to a normal sized man -- in this case Dimitri, but could be anyone, really -- Jenny confirms what she suspected all along: Chuck’s smallish. His saggy chinos, rolled up, still manage to pool over his trainers.
“I threw a scone at him,” Jenny confesses. “He’s the serial dick I told you about, D. Gets all pervert handsy when we come out from behind the counter.”
“She attacked me with a bio-muffin.”
“Stop embarrassing yourself, man.” Dimitri has only two interests: handpicked mycotoxin-free fair trade certified organic Nicaraguan beans, and cross-training. His forearms are bigger than Chuck’s legs. The manager may be an asshole, but he's her asshole for once.
“Get out of here,” he tells the Amazon driver. “You buy your coffee beverages somewhere else from now on.”
After one defiant, disgusted sideways spit, Chuck turns and swaggers with all the dignity he seems able to muster, back to his van, and they watch him climb in and drive away. Could be Jenny’s imagination, but she would swear she hears Chuck screaming as he pulls into traffic.
“You smoking out here, Jennifer?”
“No, sir.”
“Good.” This is the longest conversation she’s had with Dimitri since he hired her.
“Thanks,” Jenny says, and means it.
“Shayda thought you needed help.” He glances at the rebar she’s still clutching, then spies the mess at the bin. “Put your sword away, and clean that shit up.”
He leaves, and Jenny does, but not before typing a reminder into her phone to call her mom.



Daniel Pyne is a writer living in California.