Kirsten's Fiction Notebook

Chapter 1 recap: 18-year-old Sam, a high school senior, is dismayed when he finds he’s been accepted to Princeton University. Going to Princeton would interfere with his secret dream of becoming a Sumo wrestler, and it would force him to abandon his 7-year-old sister Priscilla, or ‘Pill,’ who relies on him as a caregiver and as a buffer against their abusive mother Frankie. After an especially bad fight between Priscilla and Frankie, Priscilla says she wants to kill herself. This, combined with Sam’s sense that he has some other destiny in store, brings him to a new and unexamined solution: he and Priscilla will leave home. Please note: This chapter contains some offensive language and ideas. Sorry to give offense to anyone, but good fiction needs some good bad guys, in my opinion. 2. Lyle the Hammer’s Philosophy on Happiness Lyle the Hammer danced off the set, punching the air in rhythm with the thumping music, his muscles popping against his sleek shirt, his blood thrumming. This was...

    1. Signs           I used to think of fate as an academic term. Fate was AP English. It was Mrs. Culpanada, drifting into the rows between desks and staring us down. “Why did Oedipus kill his father?” she’d say. “Bad timing? Road rage? No, it was his destiny. His fate .” And she leaned into that word like she was mashing it into our brains, forcing us to see the world with ancient eyes. But at the time I couldn’t believe in fate. Chemistry was my favorite subject. Life was made up of molecules endlessly combining and recombining. It was complex, and it followed certain laws, but there was no cosmic engineer making it happen. Oedipus Rex was a children’s story, a fairy tale. I could see it no other way. Until I became Oedipus. There were signs beforehand, the first appearing in a thunderstorm in March, when I went out into the pounding rain to fetch Pill’s toys. We had been hanging out in the living room, Pill playing on the floor with her ...