the world is ending, but it has been for some time; shenzi barely thinks about it anymore. sometimes a turn of the light will catch her eye and she will remember that everything is fading away, but these reminders are gentle, like a touch on the shoulder waking you up from a dream. there is no rush, here at the end. things disappear slowly, less like they are leaving and more like they are lingering. impossibly, shenzi thinks, impossibly, we made it, all of us; impossibly, th

Days between storms, the Ladies Association of Bright Colors holds parades. As they pass by the street outside they pop open their rainbow of parasols and shout curses at our house. They call us the Cat Thieves because of the way the neighborhood felines stage hostile takeovers of the apartment every time it rains. We've tried to explain that the pets aren't invited and we'd prefer it if they stayed away, but once you get a reputation as a Cat Thief, there's really no sheddin

to be seen and unseen. Leala always celebrates her birthday on the second Friday of September, even though she was born in March on a Tuesday afternoon. Leala likes Fridays. She likes the feel and taste of them, the way they roll in slow and easy and slide into Saturday without much of a pause at all. She likes how smoothly Fridays go: everyone shows up a softer shade of yellow than they left the night before. Leala likes Fridays because she doesn't have to work. They all get

monsters aren't meant to be touched. June's parents buy the squid on kind of a whim. Her little brother has always been into marine biology, and the idea of surprising him with his own giant squid had appealed to June's mother when she spotted the sign in the curiosity shop on the border of a small town they stopped in for the night on the way to Colorado. Their yard is barely big enough for the tank, so June's father has to knock down a few of the trees that they planted whe

wanktok: people who speak the same language as you do and have some claim on you. The house is built on words. From the rust-colored water that runs from the faucet in the upstairs bedroom to the cracked wooden floor, they are always tripping on letters. Their mother collects words and sells them in her curiosity shop; on every birthday, a new one is wrapped in paper and a bow and left at the foot of their beds. It must be opened before breakfast (words are best digested on a