I started toward the barn and was grateful that the wind was still. About halfway up the drive, my heart began to beat an irregular rhythm as I caught sight of Cricket coming toward me. My breath caught in my throat. This girl. This tiny little girl had such incredible power over me with her big, blue, round, sad eyes. Her unusual face, her unusually striking face. Her pert nose. The faint laugh lines around her eyes and mouth. And I didn’t know her, didn’t really even know if she and I were anything alike but that didn’t stop me from wishing we shared a future...even if she did belong to someone else.

Awkward conversations. They’re the heart of the drug trade. The driving force that keeps criminals out of jail is paranoia. You can think you know people, but the truth is, you never know who they’re talking to. The life of an outlaw: Around every corner lies a cop. In every basement waits a bust. Every friend is the guy who sells you out to keep his own ass out of jail. Sure, it was rare, but you just never knew.The result was a series of shorthand and euphemisms so obscure even the pros often weren’t sure what they were talking about. Sales became pickups. Pot, ganja, bud, or weed became lettuce, green, happy, herb, smoke... the list went on, and changed from dealer to dealer.

Time. So much of our human experience is bound up in time, I muse. It reflects in our everyday colloquialisms, and drives so much of our activities. Yet this obsession with the passing of the hours is a relatively modern phenomenon; an inevitable product of the Industrial Revolution, and its fixation on efficiency. A new master exported by England across the globe, so that in the developed world at least everyone has one wrist on which is clamped the new and unforgiving shackle we call a watch. In less pressurised days, men observed the ageing of the universe through the more sedate changing of the seasons. But no more. Now the hour is king, or the minute and sometimes even the second. We are all people in a rush, where speed is of the essence, and slow is often deployed as a term of abuse.

Two distinctive traits especially identify beyond a doubt a strong and dominant character. One trait is contempt for external circumstances, when one is convinced that men ought to respect, to desire, and to pursue only what is moral and right, that men should be subject to nothing, not to another man, not to some disturbing passion, not to Fortune. The second trait, when your character has the disposition I outlined just now, is to perform the kind of services that are significant and most beneficial; but they should also be services that are a severe challenge, that are filled with ordeals, and that endanger not only your life but also the many comforts that make life attractive.Of these two traits, all the glory, magnificence, and the advantage, too, let us not forget, are in the second, while the drive and the discipline that make men great are in the former.

Marxist Man could not have come upon the earth at a more illogical time. In an age when technological advances have finally made it feasible to adequately feed, clothe and house the entire human race, Marxist Man stands as a military threat to this peaceful achievement. His sense of insecurity drives him to demand exclusive control of human affairs in a day when nearly all other peoples would like to create a genuine United nations dedicated to world peace and world-wide prosperity. Although man can travel faster than sound and potentially provide frequent, intimate contacts between all cultures and all peoples, Marxist Man insists on creating iron barriers behind which he can secretly work.

Fuck it,” said Private First Class Chris Barnes, raising his hand. “Let’s do it. This sounds like a great fucking idea. Who wants to get blown up?” They started laughing. Watt, Barker, Cortez, and Private First Class Shane Hoeck all raised their hands. They did not give a damn anymore. It was all so absurd to them, that they were going to drive up and down a road for the next eight hours as bomb magnets. The only thing that they could do was laugh. “Hooray! We’re going out to get blown up!” they sang. “Who’s on board? Hey, who wants to come get blown up? Woohoo! Yeah, dude, I am ready to go fucking die! We are all going to fucking die!

The car was on the FDR drive now and, turning her head, she glanced out at the bleak brown buildings of the projects that stretched for blocks along the drive. Something inside her sank at the sight of all that sameness, and she suddenly felt defeated.She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. In the past year, she'd started experiencing these moments of desperate emptiness, as if nothing really mattered, nothing was ever going to change, there was nothing new; and she could see her life stretching before her--one endless long day after the next, in which every day was essentially the same. Meanwhile, time was marching on, and all that was happening to her was that she was getting older and smaller, and one day she would be no bigger than a dot, and then she would simply disappear. Poof! Like a small leaf burned up under a magnifying glass in the sun. These feelings were shocking to her, because she'd never experienced world-weariness before. She'd never had time. All her life, she'd been striving and striving to become this thing that was herself--the entity that was Nico O'Neilly. And then, one morning, time had caught up with her and she had woken up and realized that she was there. She had arrived at her destination, and she had everything she'd worked so hard for: a stunning career, a loving (well, sort of) husband, whom she respected, and a beautiful eleven-year-old daughter whom she adored.She should have been thrilled. But instead, she felt tired. Like all those things belonged to someone else.

You don’t understand,” my dad said. “They stop you.” “Who? What are you talking about?” my mom asked. “That’s why I was being cautious.” “Who stops you?” “The police. If you’re white, or maybe Oriental, they let you drive however you want. But if you’re not, they stop you.” “Who told you that?” “The guys at the diner. That’s what they say. If you’re black or if you’re brown, they automatically think you’ve done something wrong.” “Rafa, that’s ridiculous. We’ve lived here for fifteen years. We’re citizens.” “The police don’t know that by looking at us. They see a brown face through the windshield and boom! Sirens!” My mom shook her head. “That’s what that was about?” “I didn’t want to give them reason to stop me.” “You were driving like a blind man, Rafa. That will give them reason to stop you.” “Everybody else just has to obey the law. We have to obey it twice as well.” “But that doesn’t mean you have to go twice as slow as everybody else!” The light turned green and my dad brought the car out of first. We cruised under the overpass, a shadow draping over the car like a blanket. “Next time, just try to blend in with everyone else and you’ll be fine,” my mom offered. “The way of the world,” my dad said. “What?” my mom asked as we emerged back into the sunlight. “Just trying to blend in. That’s the way of the world.” “Well, that’s the way of America, at least,” my mom said.

But we left camp after a while and we was driving in a real spooky place cause all the roads up near camp are dark and in the woods and we had to drive for a while to get to a highway cause there was no street lights or anything and nothing but woods and my dad asked me if I had a good time and I told him I did, but that’s really a lie and I felt like telling him what it was like at that mean old camp, but I thought he’d get mad and tell me I’m making it up and I thought I’d tell him some other time like Febuary and cause I didn’t think he’d believe me anyway, but so I changed my mind and then I thought I should tell him now cause he’ll wonder howcome I never told him sooner, so when he said that’s a nasty gash and when he said what did I do, stumble on the trail and hit a big rock or something? I told him no and I told him that lots of bad things happened to me at camp and that I never want to go there again cause I hate it and I almost cried. But he said I always had a bibid emigination cause he’s sure it wasn’t that bad! And I don’t know about those big words either, but what he said made me kind of mad cause grownups always think they know what happened to you better than you do yourself.

I want you here. I want you in my home, my bed, my life,” he murmured, the smooth out of his voice, it was low and so rough with sex and emotion, it was abrasive, scoring through me.“Baby –”“I want your clothes in my closet. I wanna hear your voice in my house when you’re talkin’ on the phone. I want you sittin’ beside me when we’re watchin’ TV. I want shit you like in my fridge. I want “your razors in my shower. I want my roof over your head. Your car in my garage. I want to give you what I should have been giving you for sixteen years. As good as you deserve. A showplace. A place where I can make you happy.”God. He was killing me.“Creed, let me –”He didn’t let me finish. He pressed on, driving in, our bodies jolting with his thrusts, his voice harsh in my ear.“Give me that, Sylvie. Give me that and, swear to God, I’ll give you everything.”“I –”His head came up, his cock drove deep and stayed planted and his eyes burned into mine.“All I’ll ask. All I’ll ever ask. You give me that and you got a lifetime of nothin’ but take.