Celeste Ng is the author of the novel Everything I Never Told You, which was a New York Times bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book of 2014, Amazon’s #1 Best Book of 2014, and named a best book of the year by over a dozen publications. Everything I Never Told You was also the winner of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature and the ALA’s Alex Award, and was a finalist for numerous awards, including…
When I was in high school, I saw myself as someone who moved between cliques. My main friend group included smart athletic types, potheads, and nerds (we wouldn’t have classified ourselves in that way—we would have said we were “normal”). Many of us were in Model U.N., mostly because it meant a trip every year. A few of us were friends with the more popular kids. A few of us who played sports were friends…
I’m sitting alone in Girvan, Scotland, on one of the longest days of the year, looking at the late sun and thinking about the women who all of a sudden caught fire. There were a good number of them. Enough, in the 1700s, to constitute a chapter in the medical literature. The most-quoted British case is Grace Pitt, a 60ish female whose charred corpse was discovered one morning in 1744—like “a log of…
Gretchen McCulloch's previous works of linguistic genius for The Toast can be found here. The Wired style guide changed my life. One particular sentence, in fact. We know from experience that new terms often start as two words, then become hyphenated, and eventually end up as one word. Go there now. Oh. I thought. Oh.
Good morning! Wake up! You're going to be late for school! What's that? It's me, silly. Your mother! It's August 26th, the first day of school, and you're going to be late if you don't get a move on. Sorry, what did you just say? Oh, don't be ridiculous, kiddo. You know what year it is. You're twelve years old, and you're starting the seventh grade today, and it's just after six am. Your alarm…
Went to the gym daily to bulk up in order to become strong and worthy of her, using "for Serena" as his concentration mantra in between reps Played Taylor Swift's "You Belong With Me" on repeat during Tabata workouts to keep his focus pure Casually looked up tennis scoring names on his phone just before starting conversation with her, clenching his fist and muttering to himself, "It's love, fifteen, thirty, forty, game, you can do this,…
The therapist looked disgusted when I told her Quentin's idea of foreplay was an erection against my leg. I felt vindicated. Even she was repulsed by my husband. Our magnetic fields repelled each other on the loveseat. “Thanks for that,” Quentin said in the car. “If it wasn't true I wouldn't say it.” “Did you see the look she gave me?” I wondered what he expected after all this time. “I forget what it's like…
I’ve spent a lot of the last year driving back and forth across and up and down the United States in that awkward quarter-life crisis period toeing the, uh, thin line between “work” and “pleasure” in a precarious economy. You’d think that by the time I moved from rural California to Iowa by myself (with my bike strapped to the top of my car, in the span of three days), I would have figured out…
You can tell he has the virus the day he puts his hands on your face when he kisses you, warm fingertips canting your head a few degrees bit off north, which feels sweet, not terrible at all, but is not something he’s done in twenty years of kissing you. He’s picked this up from someone else, someone infected. Later, the realization that you will both die, and soon, but first: Did the other woman…
When Sela Lowe invited her children, Aimee, Bobby, Cecelia, and Matty, to the lake at the beginning of September it was clear the invitation was more demand than request. At least, it was clear to Cecelia. The others viewed Sela’s words as law, as compact phosphorescent orbs of fact, the sort of facts told by honest-to-god truth tellers. “Righteous truths,” Matty once said to Cecelia. Whether demand or fact, Kyle kissed his wife outside the…
They'll be Friends forever, even if Matt LeBlanc and Matthew Perry didn't make the guest list for Jennifer Aniston's wedding to Justin Theroux. "I think they're a great couple. I think she's happy. And that's all I care about is that Jen's happy," LeBlanc, 48, told PEOPLE on Monday at a Television Critics Association press event in Los Angeles. "If she wanted me there, I would have been there." Perry, 45, also wished the…
Before I saw the man’s body shake, I saw his shopping cart shake. He’d pulled out the child’s seat and put three folded shirts there, all striped through three different colorways. The belly of the cart was empty, and so I looked at his arms. They held his hands awkwardly, palms pushed forward, like a child getting ready to push up his shoulders and say Idon’tknow. Then I saw the hands themselves, their fingers and…
It’s raining again and Danni wears a slicker out the door to catch the trolley. No longer their door, just hers. A homeless woman who has become a landmark of Danni’s mornings gibbers to herself from the piss-reeking trolley shelter. She and the woman are always the only black people at the stop. It starts to rain harder, but no one will risk the smell or the woman’s possibly volatile company to sit in the…
BE HONEST, Mel writes. (“No pussyfooting around,” her mother’s voice says in her head, but she knows the guys would razz her for writing “pussy.”) I WANT UR OBJECTIVE OPINION. 1 TO 10. It’s dangerous to ask for a number. Other girls are master fishers, staving off cruelty with their own ruthlessness: i know im fat, i know my hair sucks, i just want to know how hopeless things are. Mostly the guys play along,…
“Keep your hands to yourself,” I say to Alma, one of the pre-K students at my school. Alma narrows her eyes and gives me a look that says Go to hell. She is holding a sharpened pencil, readying it to poke another student. “I'm watching you. Put it away.” I see my former student, Claudia, running from the sidewalk into the street. Why aren't the teachers stopping her? I look around for the music teacher who usually monitors…
