Great new(ish) stories from around the Web. Forget work for a minute and read a story. It’s good for you.
– Francis Varsho took leave from opening his birthday presents to calm himself in private. Almost all gifts people gave him these days insulted Francis deeply, as though, through the act of generosity, they were trying to undermine his sense of self. The latest offender—on this, his twelfth birthday—was his grandmother, whom he’d not seen in over a year and who hadn’t bothered to show up for his birthday dinner of square pizza and two kinds of root beer. — Baird Harper in Cut Bank
– On a rainy Saturday in February of this year, a sea otter wandered the near-shore waters of the Pacific, stopping to rest off the rocks of a small Oregon town called Depoe Bay. The otter floated on its back, rubbing his paws over a whiskered face and crossing his flippers in repose. He swam and ate and frolicked in a patch of bull kelp just a few yards from the Oregon State Whale Watching Center, a squat concrete building just off Highway 101. — Michelle Theriault in Etude
– I hadn’t seen him for days. The seat next to me on the bus to San Fernando Junior High stayed empty. There were rumors: a fiery car crash, a crippling polio attack, the Russians kidnapping his whole family. The Sanders’ Studebaker was missing from their driveway. My mind conjured fantastic tales. But on Saturday afternoon, something bounced against my bedroom window and I saw him climbing our walnut tree. — Terry Sanville in Fogged Clarity
– He sold amethysts and other gems from a cart in the middle of the food court. I stopped at Auntie Anne’s for a pretzel and he tapped me on the shoulder with his wand, smiling wide in the mandatory wizard costume. His thick fingers grazed my hipbone as he slipped a gem in my pocket. He was kind and I let him drive me home in his old taxicab. The peeled leather seats were charming and I told him so, lingering in the passenger seat while he idled outside of my apartment. — Alanna Peterson in failbetter
– Celia is a year older than I am and significantly taller. She fell on a patch of ice in March and broke her tailbone. “And I don’t even have a tail,” she said, and that was all it took for me to fall in love. If only I could make her feel the same. — Will Donnelly in SmokeLong Quarterly
