Month: March 2025

831 words

I hated every second of this. I have no idea where this is going or what kind of a person Jackson is or Bets is. Charles is cool though.

“It’s not important, darling.” Jackson took a swig of his Scotch, finishing it, the single, carefully crafted ice cube barely melted. He glared at the glass as if it were at fault for its lack of alcohol.

Jackson was ignored. “I swear, I could remember it yesterday,” Bets laughed, and placed her hand lightly on the arm of the gentleman to her left. He didn’t seem to mind. “I swear to god,” she said, emphasizing this with a flutter of a tap on the man’s arm before returning her attention to the whole group, “I’d forget my head if it weren’t screwed on.” She bobbled her head to demonstrate the precariousness of the attachment. “Isn’t that right, Jackson?” she gestured her Chardonnay in his direction.

“Mmm,” he said, looking over her shoulder at the bar. Then, realizing the group was watching him and expecting something more, added, “But when you look like this,” he gestured at Bets with an up-and-down flourish, “one can forgive a little absentmindedness.” The effect was predictable; the group clucked in appreciation like satisfied chickens, and Bets preened and waved him away.

“Oh, stop,” she said in a way that encouraged him to go on.

When Jackson did, in fact, stop, the gentleman to her left—Bradley, he thought his name was—picked it up. “Well. I for one would be more than happy to remind you of anything you’d like for as long as you’d like. It would be my honor.” He turned to Jackson. “You got a good one, here, Jacks. Don’t let her get away.”

Jackson smiled and reexamined the inside of his glass. “Oh, I know,” he said, and looked into Bets’ face. “Everybody loves Bets.” No one in the group seemed to notice Bets’ smile faltering briefly then righting itself, like a light bulb flickering for a split second. 

“I seem to be a bit dry,” Jackson said, rattling his glass. “Darling, would you like something?” Bets shook her head, holding out her glass to show him it was still half full. “Right,” he said. I’m sure if I leave Bets here for a few moments she’ll be in good hands? Not literally, Bradley. You behave yourself.” Jackson raised his glass in salute as he left the chuckling group behind.

Jackson ordered another Scotch, and a glass identical to the one he just surrendered was set in front of him. He did love the ice cubes they used. He understood it was a meticulous process to make them so symmetrical and clear, and he admired how it floated like a crystalline island in a sea of sunset-colored liquid. For a moment he wished he could live on that island. He hadn’t realized he’d settled into a seat at the bar until someone addressed him.

“Setting up shop, Jacks?” he said, easing himself with difficulty into the seat next to him.

Jackson glanced in the direction of the voice. It was Charles, née “Chuck” in middle school. He’d always been big—his whole family was—but now Charles found it difficult to get around. Even now, Jackson noticed he wasn’t sitting on the barstool as much as he was leaning on it. 

“No sir,” Jackson said, “Just taking a little breather.” He gestured at the well-stocked bar. “What can I get you?”

Charles laughed. “I think I’m at my limit for tonight,” he said. He toward the group Jackson had just left. “She’s quite the belle of the ball, isn’t she?” he said. “You’ve got your own little Scarlett O’Hara, there, don’t you.”

Jackson swiveled in his seat. Bets was surrounded by men, all of their attention strictly on her, jostling for position to get closer, to get noticed. It did indeed remind Jackson of the barbecue scene in “Gone with the Wind,” Scarlett flirting and reveling in the spotlight, the men arguing over who should get her a drink or a piece of cake. He used to be one of those men. And now he was… what was he, exactly? Certainly her husband, but what else? His thought process was interrupted by Bets’ laugh, the performative one, the one where she throws her head back and gives her audience a good look at her back teeth.

He shrugged. “I guess I do at that.” He took a sip of the Scotch, trying to make this one last. The last time he got drunk he was not at his best.

“How do you keep up?” Charles shifted his weight, trying to find comfort on a seat that was designed to be less than comfortable. 

Jackson frowned. “Keep up? WIth what?”

Charles snorted. “With what. With that!” There was another explosion of laughter from the group, and Jackson clamped his eyes shut.

“You okay, bud?” Charles leaned forward, genuinely concerned. Jackson liked Charles. Always had. Good boy at 12, good man at 52.

Jackson smiled. “I’m all right. I just think I need”—he stopped himself from saying, “to get away from my wife’s voice”—and instead said, “a little air.”

766 words

This was supposed to be yesterday’s prompt. What I should have done was just posted the prompt with a blank post (get it?).

This had a lot of possibilities, but I chose to create a catch phrase out of it and dragged out the old trope of someone practicing lines in a mirror. I can live with that. If I were to continue the story, he’s probably make it to the studio just fine but end up on the cutting room floor.

The mirror was fogged from his hot shower. He stood before it for a moment, then wiped the condensation away with the palm of his hand. Dissatisfied with the streaky, opaque results, he took the crumpled washcloth from the counter and finished the job. He stared at himself. He’d been telling himself that bad lighting was causing the shadows under his eyes and the hollows in his cheeks, but, if that were the case, bad lighting was everywhere, including this bathroom. 

He patted his face dry, then reached for the box of under-eye patches. They were rubbery and slick, and he struggled to place them on the puffy skin beneath his eyes. His sister raves about the results, but what the hell does she know. She’s 24. She was convinced every ill-conceived cream and serum works, because after she takes it off, hey, 24-year-old skin. 

He glanced at the clock. He was very early, but that was okay. He told himself he wasn’t early because he was anxious. He was a professional. He was taking the time to wake his mind and body up before the 6 AM call, looking refreshed and ready to go. He calculated the time it would take to get to Burbank again in his head, though he had checked and double-checked the distance and traffic patterns two nights ago. About 30 minutes, and he’d planned on leaving an hour early. Plenty of time. In fact, maybe he should leave an hour and 15 minutes early instead of the hour like he’d planned. What if there’s a SIG alert? He wished he hadn’t needed to move to Alhambra. He would have liked to have stopped at Black Elephant for a coffee and maybe a scone. He supposed he could if he got there early enough, but it was far enough away from the studio that he couldn’t risk it.

Mel had been very clear about this job. “Get there, get there on time, do the work, and do it well,” she’d said on the phone. It was a small part. Scratch that—a very small part, and Mel had worked hard to get it. “I don’t want to hear you were late, didn’t know your lines, or looked like you’d been up all night.”

“I got it,” he said.

“Do you, Rafe?” she’d said, and Rafe had heard that tone before. In the early days, he could ignore it because he was in charge. But she held the reins now. “Because this is it, my boy. Quentin’s doing me a solid, here.”

“I do,” he said. “I really do. You don’t have to worry, Mel. I’ll be there with bells on.”

“I don’t give a shit about your bells, Rafe. But if you mess this one up—”

“Mel. I know. I get it.”

Mel grunted and hung up the phone. She never said a proper goodbye at the end of their conversations, they just ended. Like phone calls did in movies.

The mirror had fully cleared. He pressed his palms onto the counter and leaned toward his reflection. He smirked, popping one eyebrow skyward. 

“Not today,” he said. He liked that verison; it was a knowing smile, savoring the violence that would come next. It was very ‘90s action hero. Oooh. What if “not today” became a catch phrase? It wasn’t very original, but a lot of catch phrases weren’t exactly breaking new ground. “I’ll be back” isn’t really a catch phrase unless you could do a passable Austrian accent. He refocused in the mirror.

“Not. Today.” This version also had its charms. It was quiet, thoughtful, and contained a simmering rage bubbling beneath the calm demeanor. This version comes from a man with untold strength, one could snap a forearm in two with one hand. This version defends children and puppies, but his viciousness runs deep. Of course, the gold eye patches didn’t help the illusion. He peeled them off, the skin beneath them still decidedly puffy. Maybe he should have left them on longer. 

He had three lines, but this last one was at a pivotal point in the movie. This is when all hell breaks loose. Mel had talked Quentin into pulling a John Travolta and bringing Rafe in for those three lines, kind of a surprise cameo. In the film, they’d been referencing the “top guy” throughout the story, in hushed, awed, fearful references. And then when he finally shows up, it’s Rafe. Mel pitched it beautifully, even going as far as describing the audience’s reaction. “Everyone’s going to go crazy,” she’d said. “They’re going to love it.”

853 words

When I first glanced at the prompt yesterday (yeah yeah I skipped a day), I thought it said, “Four of ten,” and I had a completely different story writing in my head. So when I looked at it again and had to start over, that was frustrating. That’s what I get for skipping a day and not refreshing my memory.

This was fun to write because of all the dialogue. The challenge here was to not name either of them or write from a particular point of view. That’s hard, especially when writing dialogue; I like to “cocoon” dialogue with analogies, feelings, and thoughts to help flesh out the characters. Without it, motivations and feelings aren’t clear, and we’re reliant on the actions of the characters to determine mood. Oh, and clearly I was thinking of the beginning of “Ghostbusters” (directed by Ivan Reitman).

“That’s not too bad,” he said, looking at the cards laid out between them. They were from a standard deck of 52 playing cards, the ubiquitous Bicycle brand, facing up. “Not great, but not too bad.”

“What does that mean?” she said, leaning forward, the tips of her blonde hair brushing the cards. Before he could answer, she said, “Can I try again?”

He scratched the back of his neck. “I mean, sure,” he said, “but that becomes less like a controlled experiment and more like a guessing game. We’re not trying to measure how well you can guess.”

She nodded, and her hair moved one of the cards out of place. It was a two of diamonds. “But I got four out of ten,” she said. “That seems high for guessing, especially considering there are 52 cards in deck.”

“I know how many cards are in a deck,” he said. “But someone who’s lucky will get three to four correct,” he said, straightening the cards until the tops of the cards were even and level with each other. “Five and above, that’s something to work with. With four, we could go either way. Nothing definitive here.”

“But I saw them,” she said, tapping her finger on the two of diamonds, sliding it out of place.  “I could actually see them in my brain. Almost like it was floating there in water or… or…” she looked up, trying to recapture her vision. “Like it was suspended in a clear gel.” She shook her head. “I can’t explain it. Am I making sense?”

“Not really,” he said. “But I’m one of those people who can’t ‘see’ things in their head. I don’t have a ‘mind’s eye’ or whatever you call it.”

She blinked at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, when someone asks you to close your eyes and picture something, that doesn’t happen for me. So no, what you’re saying doesn’t resonate.”

She gaped. “How weird! Is it like, nothing?”

“It’s not nothing, it’s just not something. More of a sense, or a concept of the thing.”

She slumped back in her chair, eyes wide, smiling. “That is fascinating. Do you dream?”

He shifted in his chair. “Some other time I’d be happy to tell you all about my supposed brain anomalies. I happen to think that humans are varied and complicated and the brain is a squishy meat antenna attuned to different frequencies, and some humans are on AM radio, and some are on FM.”

“What does that mean?”

He sighed. “Never mind. I just mean that I think our brains work differently from one another’s, and we just don’t know it. Which is why,” he said, straightening the two of diamonds, “we do experiments like this, to see how differently our brains work. 

“Oh, you mean like how I see red might not be the same color as what you see. You could be seeing blue or green.”

He shrugged. “Sure,” he said. “Now. When someone comes to me saying they have psychic abilities,” he gestured across the table, “that’s interesting to me. Not because I think ESP or telekinesis exists—well, not in the way people tend to think it exists, anyway—but because I think their brains are tuned into something we can’t normally perceive with our traditional senses.

“So you don’t think people can read other people’s minds?”

“Again, not in the way that people think they can.”

Her eyes widened. “What if someone tried to read your mind? Would it just be blank?” She sat up straight, her palms facing him as if she was defending herself. “Not because you’re stupid or anything. But because of what you said about not seeing things in your mind.”

He stifled a sigh. “I don’t know,” he said. “Like I mentioned, I don’t think that works that way.” He glanced at his watch. “Can we get back to it?”

“Sure,” she said, and it was her turn to look annoyed. “What’s next?”

“A hearing test,” he said. 

“What?”

“A hearing test,” he said, and she laughed. He didn’t attempt to stifle this sigh.

“A little joke,” she said. When he said nothing, she continued. “Why a hearing test? What does that have to do with anything?”

“Remember what I was saying about frequencies? I’m testing to see if you’re more sensitive to certain pitches.”

“I don’t get what that has to do with me being able to see cards,” she said, frowning. She was becoming bored.

“It may not,” he said, “but I’m curious. And that means I’ll look outside of what someone thinks is obvious to possibly create connections that can tell us more about what’s going on. You should try it.” He winced a bit, but she didn’t notice the slight. 

“Yeah, me too,” she said. “I like to learn about things. What does that do? She said, waving to the device as if to prove her point.

“It’s an audiometer,” he said. She reached for it, but he pulled it away. “Please don’t. It’s expensive.”

797 words

This one was fun to write because it has a lot of dialogue and I love writing dialogue. I didn’t get to the prompt, but it’s not hard to see where this was going. And I suppose it’s not very original; how many horror stories have started with this premise? But ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .

“We shouldn’t be messing with this.” Katy pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, something she did when she was nervous. She was sitting away from the group, outside the circle that had formed on the floor of Carla’s expansive bedroom. The other girls’ heads were bowed in reverence, the air filled with stifled giggles and insistent hushing.

“Shhhhhhh!” Carla looked back at Katy. “You’re making me lose my concentration.”

“Yeah,” Rachel said. “And you’re blocking the energy with your negativity,” she said this with an air of superiority.

Katy gathered her sleeping bag around her body. She’d wish she could have brought Pongo. Her stuffed bear would been helpful in this situation, but she knew that would be social suicide. No one her age still slept with stuffies. At least, no one admitted it. Looking around Carla’s room, there were plenty of fluffy characters with button eyes and felt faces, but none of them took up residence on the bed. Suspiciously so, Katy thought. She cleared her throat. “It’s just that I saw a movie where—”

All four of the girls snapped their heads toward Katy and hissed in unison. “Oh my god, Katy,” Carla rolled her eyes. “If you’re so scared you should go to the TV room or something,” she said, turning her attention back to the middle of the circle.

“Or go home,” Rachel said. “You could call your dad or something.” She smiled slyly at the group. Carla made a half-hearted attempt to suppress a giggle, then arranged her face in exaggerated seriousness. 

“Rachel. That’s mean.” She almost broke again, but she managed to keep her features straight.

Rachel shrugged. “I’m just saying if she’s scared, we wouldn’t want to traumatize her.”

Carla nodded gravely toward Katy. “I mean, she is right,” she said. “You’ve been through a lot lately. If this is too much for you, you could, you know. Leave?” 

Katy had seen this look on Carla’s face before, and on Rachel’s, and on Sammie’s and Rianne’s, and all of the other girls’ faces at school. It was like a shared joke she didn’t understand, but she had a feeling it was at her expense. It was like their faces and their words said one thing, but there was another hidden meaning underneath, spoken in a language she didn’t know, like when she turned the TV to channel 12 when she got home from school. They showed Spanish soap operas, and Katy would sometimes watch them to see if she could figure out what was going on. 

But what Katy couldn’t understand was, if this were a joke, what made it funny? If they were saying nice things to her but actually didn’t mean them, how was that amusing? Jokes had a punchline, something unexpected with the outcome, or a play on words. Pretending to be nice but really being mean didn’t have a punchline, as far as Katy knew. She didn’t know how to react in these instances, so she took what they said at face value.

“No, I’m okay, thanks,” she said, and that made the group glance at one another and smirk. Katy knew she had just delivered the punchline. “But it’s just—”

“Jesus Christ, Katy, could you not—” there was a unanimous gasp, and Carla’s head swiveled toward the group. “Stop it, Rachel,” she said.

“I’m not doing it,” Rachel said, shaking her head.

“Seriously. Knock it off,” Carla said. 

“I swear to God, I’m not doing it,” she said. 

Katy quietly inched toward the circle. She seemed to have disappeared from the room, the joke over. All four girls’ eyes were locked on the glossy board in the middle of the circle, Rachel and Carla’s fingertips lightly resting on the plastic arrow thingy. Katy knew it was called a “planchette,” but had decided to keep that information to herself.

The planchette was moving.

“Rianne, get the notebook, get the notebook!” Carla said, and Rianne did what she was told, flipping it to a new page and clicking her Hello Kitty pen ready.

The planchette was moving with stuttering, indecisive movements, like a toddler just learning to walk. It looked sleepy and disoriented. 

“I swear to God, Rachel, if you’re doing this on purpose, I’m going to—”

“I’m not,” Rachel said again, and there was no mistaking her expression or her tone. It was definitely fear.

The planchette was more confident now, exploring the alphabet printed on the game board, like it was tasting it. It stopped, its round window displaying an “H.” 

“H!” the four girls said in unison, and Rianne dutifully wrote it down.

The planchette moved again, this time landing on “I.”

“I!” the girls sang out. “Hi!” Carla said, looking relieved. “It’s saying hi! Awww, that’s cute.” “Hi!” she said, lowering her head closer to the board as if someone was inside it.

862 words

I tried to think of something besides a prize, but honestly, I didn’t want to complicate this. So this is just a straightforward story about a little girl winning second prize at a minor school event. I know I didn’t get to the prompt itself, but if I were going to continue with this story, it would be kind of the “punch line” of the thing.

By the way, I really did win second prize at the long jump, and I really did choke on my last turn. To this day, I’m still proud of that ribbon. I still have it. The next time I’m in my storage unit I’ll see if I can find it and post it here.

Maddie checked her pocket to make sure it was still there. It was, of course. She paused her walk long enough to pull out the ribbon, unfurl it, and read the words stamped there in cheap gold ink. She had never won anything at an athletic competition before, but there it was. Her ribbon for the long jump. She didn’t even know she could do a long jump before that afternoon—what opportunities did she really had before then—but it turned out she had a knack for it. Her long legs and stride didn’t hurt either.

They’d been given three tries, and her first two were really good. She botched the third try because she’d gotten too much in her own head and broke her stride before lift-off. Her teacher clucked his tongue and said, not unkindly, “Kind of choked on that one, kid.” She’d laughed, agreeing. But she had still won a ribbon in a Field Days event, and after a lifetime of hurled names like, “spaz,” “doofus,” and “klutz,” she was proud. Even Alicia had to congratulate her, because after all, she was the only one in her classroom to win a prize for that event. Well, it was sort of a congratulations. She guessed “You finally did something good, doof,” counted. 

These solitary afternoon walks home were the favorite part of Maddie’s day, where she could walk as slowly or as quickly as she wanted to, glancing into people’s homes when they’ve left the blinds open. She wasn’t doing it to be creepy, though she supposed it kind of was; she was just intrigued by other people’s lives. It was a never-ending source of fascination that others in the same neighborhood or even on the same street could have such different-looking living rooms to the one she had. Different people, different cars, different favorite colors or choice of furniture, and yet, they all chose that neighborhood.

Maddie turned down her favorite street, the one where the houses were all large with stuccoed facades and red-tile roofs, set back far from the road with expansive, well-watered lawns separating her from a peek inside. These people never left their curtains open anyway, so Maddie was left to imagine what might be inside. She loved these houses; they seemed exotic in a way that her own traditional home was not. She imagined refrigerators with ice dispensers and satellite TV and walk-in closets. On that day, with the beginning of a chill gathering in the air and the sun lower than it was even a week ago during her walk home, Maddie thought living in one of those homes would be the pinnacle of human achievement.

She shuffled through the hand-sized oak leaves that gathered in the gutters; they hadn’t yet dried enough to make a satisfying crunch sound yet. But she knew when the trees surrendered their leaves to reveal spiny, accusatory branches pointing to the sky, the sun would shine through and the now-soggy leaves would crisp beneath her feet. 

She stroked the satin in her pocket. Her mom would not be home yet, so she had time to position the ribbon where her mom would be sure to see it and create the biggest surprise. Mom liked a cup of tea when she got home. Should she tape it to the kettle? But what if she was super tired and she didn’t see it, and when she turned on the kettle her ribbon burned up? She could put it on the dining room table, but it was already loaded with mail, flyers, and toiletries from a week-ago shopping trip. Maddie thought she could put all of that away and leave the ribbon right smack-dab in the middle, but she didn’t really feel like putting all of it away. In the end, she felt like the best thing to do was to hand it to her directly, and Maddie practiced what she would say before handing over the ribbon. She’d wait until her mom was settled on the couch with her cup of tea, flipping through the day’s mail. She’d say, “Hey mom! Guess what?” Her mom, delighted, would say, “What?” and then Maddie would present the ribbon, “Ta dah!”

No. Lame. And what if mom said, “Chicken butt!” in response? She hadn’t said that in years, but what if this one time she did? Then what would Maddie do? Okay. What if she sat down next to her with a very serious look on her face—Maddie tried out her serious face—and said, “Mom, I need to talk to you about something really important.” And then when her mom got all scared, she’d say, “Psyche! I won a prize!” And her mom would sigh with relief and they’d laugh.

But what if Mom had a really hard day, and Maddie really scared her? She’d get mad, and then Maddie would have to apologize a lot, and that would ruin everything. Maddie made up her mind. She would keep it short and sweet. “Mom, look what I won!” and then she would tell her the story, even the part about choking on her last turn because it was important to tell the truth.

756 words

I don’t know what it is that she needs, but it’s not a baby, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m leaning more toward a new career opportunity in a different state, and she’s asking him to come along. Or a medical procedure of some sort, and she’s asking for his support. I don’t even fully know what their relationship is.

I was really happy that the word count was more than 750 words when I stopped where I did, because that’s exactly how I wanted it to end. Sorry we won’t get to know what the conversation was about.

The two of them had been silent for a while, boisterous customers flirting and jostling around them. Sitting quietly at their table, they were a somber island in an ocean of laughter and bad decisions in progress, some repercussions would see the light of day tomorrow, others months from now. Starla hadn’t meant to have this conversation now, in the middle of their neighborhood bar. But the words were out, laid between them on the table like a menu, and now they had to choose. Well, Starla thought, Connor had to choose. She lifted her eyes to see if she could see his choice on his face, but his own gaze was on the table, his lips thin and pale, his hands shredding a straw wrapper. Bits of papery pulp dusted the sticky table, and he wiped them away before sitting back and opening his mouth to speak.

“Starla, I—” A half-filled pint of beer exploded on the table, courtesy of a gentleman in his 30s trying to recapture some of his gloriously misspent youth. He’d been standing next to their seats, butt precariously close to Connor’s face, having an animated conversation with three women at once to bolster his odds. Starla had been watching his technique, and though she thought it was clumsy, he seemed to be making progress with one of the women. But his confidence tipped too much toward the “over” category, and he’d lost his grip on his beer while making a point. 

The glass didn’t shatter, but did an almost choreographed dance to inflict as much yeasty damage as possible. Both Starla and Connor were doused with the sour IPA before the glass came to rest on its side, slowly rocking in a puddle of its own making. Starla and Connor jumped from their seats, shaking their hands and assessing their clothes. Connor got the worst of it, and he stared down at his soaked shirt. He sighed loudly. “Come on, man,” he said. 

The mid-thirties man was horrified. “Oh my god. Oh. I am, I am so sorry,” he said, as the women he was trying to impress retreated. He looked around desperately for napkins, but finding none in the immediate vicinity, used his hand as a squeegee to slide the liquid off the table and onto his own shoes. “Ah, shit,” he said. “This isn’t going to work. I’m going to see if I can grab some napkins.” He left, and Starla knew they wouldn’t see him again. 

Starla rummaged through her bag, producing a package of Kleenex along with a crumple of unused Starbuck napkins. “Here,” she said, passing them to Connor. He took them and began dabbing his shirt. “Do you have more? Do you need one?” he said, holding the Kleenex package out to her and assessing her clothes. She waved him away. “It was mostly my arms. It’s fine.” Connor nodded, turning his attention back to his shirt. 

“Do you want another beer?” Starla asked, making a move toward the bar. This movement caught the hopeful eyes of several other customers who’d been ready to pounce on an open table. They became disinterested when Connor sat back down. “No,” Connor said, “I’ll just suck on my shirt for a while.”

Starla laughed perhaps louder than she should have, relieved the tension was broken and that he seemed to be in a good humor, despite the choice placed before him and the misery of a brew-soaked wardrobe. She checked her seat for puddles and sat down again, and Connor followed, not bothering to check his own seat. 

Connor gave up trying to dry his clothes, and began absent-mindedly shredding the napkin. “That guy had spectacularly bad timing,” Starla said. “You were about to say something.”

“Yeah,” Connor said, “I was.” He took a breath, but the momentum broken, his resolve seemed to have weakened.

Starla placed one hand over his, steadying it and saving the napkin from further destruction. “Connor,” she said. “I know this is difficult for you. But I need it. I promise I’m not trying to manipulate you or push you to a decision you don’t want to make. But I have to be honest with you. I need it. I need this. It’s probably the most important decision I’ve ever made for myself, and I’d like you to be a part of it. But I understand if you can’t. I swear. I’ll understand.”

Connor lifted his head and studied Starla’s face. He squeezed her hand hard, once, and let go. Starla knew then that the answer was no.