Six
I asked mom for a dog. She said no. I asked mom for a dog again. She said no. I asked dad for a dog. He said yes. I named him Jumper.
Eleven
Suddenly, the alien attacked me, but I punched him and he flew through the air and hit the wall really hard. I laughed at him. He couldn’t beat me because I was an astronaut.
Suddenly, a triceratops appeared. The alien called it with a strange teleporter beam. The triceratops’ name was Xzarg, and it was very mean. It tried to attack me with its horns, but I punched it and it flew through the air and crushed the alien.
Fifteen
The next day I decided to check out the superpowers I had gotten. I looked in the mirror. My muscles were huge! I could probably throw a car into the air. I wondered if I could fly.
I was almost late to school because I was trying out my lazer vision. On the bus, Mindy noticed my big muscles. “Have you been working out?”
“Sort of,” I said grinning. Then I decided to do something I had never done before. I asked her to the dance.
“I’d love to go,” she said. She laughed. It was a pretty laugh.
Eighteen
I pulled my cape around me, wrapping myself in darkness. “You deserve to die,” I breathed. He had injured me in his attempt to escape. Blood soaked my shirt, but I ignored it. I lifted him off the ground. His feet kicked as they tried to find the floor. I felt his heart beat in the veins around his neck. I squeezed his throat, slowly. It was like squishing a banana in my fist. He tried to beg for forgiveness with his last breaths; I didn’t listen. He didn’t deserve forgiveness.
Twenty-two
She looked timidly at him. Had he really said…?
“I love you,” he repeated in a whisper. It seemed a great effort for him to say it.
She laid a hand on his arm. “I had hoped, but you never…” She wanted to tell him so many things.
He smiled. ‘I was afraid.”
“I am afraid,” she said, laughing. She stared into his eyes. They met hers, drew her to him, and their lips met.
Thirty
He rode out of town, patting his horse absently. Next town over, there was trouble. And if there was trouble, he had a duty to fix it.
The sun was warming the arid landscape. He pulled the brim of his hat down to shield his eyes.
He thought back to the look Widow McCarthy had given him when he’d told her he’d have to go. He couldn’t shake that proud, hurt expression. Her child was sick and she got lonely out in the country like that.
Well, perhaps if he survived these outlaws, he’d settle down. It weren’t right to keep a woman like that waiting.
Forty
“Get down!” He pushed Eva to the ground as bullets sprayed overhead.
She looked up at him with those wide, alluring eyes. “What’s happening?”
“I’m saving you, that’s what.” He pressed the control in his tuxedo pocket. “Here we go.”
His red sports car plowed through the mansion’s wall windows, shattering glass. Grabbing Eva’s hand, he pulled her to the car. “Come on, get in.” He shoved the car in reverse, spun it in a circle, and sped off before the henchmen could recover.
He glanced at Eva. Her chest was heaving from excitement, her full red lips quivering. “Quite a party, huh?” he said, giving her a wink.
Fifty
The bank manager squinted through his spectacles, examining the papers. “It seems that we’ve declined your loan.”
“Can’t you reconsider? I’m at the end of my rope. My children…”
“Are they starving, Mr. Stephan?”
“No, no, but—”
“That is more than can be said of many these days. I’m afraid our decision is final.”
“But if I can just have this money, I’ll pay you back, with as much interest as you want, I swear. I’ve lost everything, but I know I can get it going again—” He saw that the bank manager didn’t care. “It’s not for me,” he said. “I want to leave my children something, my grandchildren something. Don’t you want to leave your children something?”
“Mr. Stephan, we are a bank, not your fairy godmother.”
Sixty
Mary was so excited that she couldn’t get to sleep for a long time. Tomorrow she would be going to her Grandfather’s farm for the summer. She loved the summers she spent with her Grandfather. He owed dozens of horses, which he let her ride, and strange things always happened that only she and her Grandfather knew about.
In the morning, she watched for the turn that took her to the farm. Even though it took more than an hour, Mary watched for that old school building where she and Grandfather had met the dwarves last year.
Finally, they arrived. Grandfather was waiting for her. “Hello, Mary,” he said, hugging her. “How have you been?” His eyes twinkled.
Seventy
I have long put off arranging the events of my life into something that might be called a biography. In part, I delayed because of a superstition that if I began, I was acknowledging that the most exciting and worthwhile parts of my life had ended. But also I delayed because I wondered if it was even necessary. When I look over my many novels and short stories, I find they are a sort of history in themselves. For I could never write an abstract thing called a story; I could only ever write of my own pains and desires and struggles, as thinly veiled as they sometimes were….